


Curse Me Goodbye

by Lumitations



Category: The Owl House (Cartoon)
Genre: ACAB - All Covens Are Bad, Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bisexual Disaster Luz Noceda, Characters will be added as they appear - Freeform, Comedy, F/F, Lesbian Disaster Amity Blight, Lumity, No Smut, There aren't actually any covens in this fic - I just wanted to make that joke, Violence, Violence in an action movie way, not horror movie way
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-19 01:36:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 51,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29618592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lumitations/pseuds/Lumitations
Summary: MYSTERY! INTRIGUE! CROCS!For Luz Noceda it looked like it was going to be the start of an ordinary day of brewing up magical potions and selling them out of the old pawn shop Eda used as a front in the human city of Cypress.For Amity Blight the day was anything but ordinary: a crime has been committed that has endangered the safety of her secretive witch community of New Bonesborough and now she must bring the perpetrator to justice.This is the story of that day.--This story takes place in an AU strongly inspired by the Urban Fantasy genre. The basics of this setting are broadly similar to the show's canon, but there are some significant differences in the timeline.
Relationships: Amity Blight & Lilith Clawthorne, Amity Blight/Luz Noceda, Eda Clawthorne & Lilith Clawthorne, Eda Clawthorne & Luz Noceda, Hooty & King (The Owl House), King & Luz Noceda, Luz Noceda & Gus Porter
Comments: 60
Kudos: 74





	1. Chapter 1

The storm that raged overhead had struck suddenly, appearing as if by magic.

The sky which had been an unbroken field of robin's egg blue just minutes ago was now shrouded in a roiling mass of black clouds that lashed the earth with sheets of rain. A wild wind howled and shrieked its way through the treetops, shredding leaves and scattering broken branches in its path, but it could barely be heard above the sound of the crashing thunder. Lightning was arcing continuously through the clouds above and the peals of thunder that roared in their wake were so close together that they seemed to be a single endless explosion of noise.

To the lone figure stumbling and weaving her way through the path, though, the storm might as well not have existed at all because she had much more important things on her mind.

Her name was Abigail, and she was running for her life.

This was made extremely difficult by the heavy, waterlogged skirts of the wedding dress she was wearing, which snagged at every protruding root and low branch and sent her sprawling into the mud.

A screeching howl pierced through the dull roar of the wind and thunder, sending an icy stab of terror into her hammering heart. Abigail swore furiously and dragged herself back to her feet, risking a single backward glance in the direction where the sound had originated.

A bulky shadow lurched and stumbled through the tree lined path behind her, illuminated in strobing flashes of lightning that gave her only blink-and-you’ll-miss-it glimpses of its features.

Fangs. Feathers. Claws. Wings. Eyes like two black pits set in a disturbingly human face.

Abigail choked out a terrified sob and tried to run while lifting the skirts of her dress away from the ground, wishing that she had chosen a different design for her gown. Maybe something closer to a track suit.

In the moments before the storm had broken, today had been one of the happiest times of Abigail’s life. She had been skeptical about her fiance’s idea to have an outdoor wedding, but the afternoon had been gorgeous and every weather app they’d checked when planning the ceremony had promised clear skies and sunshine for the whole week.

Abigail gasped out a particularly vulgar curse aimed at the makers of weather apps as her feet skidded in the churned mud of the trail and sent her slamming into a tree trunk at high speed.

Her fingernails scrabbled painfully against the rough bark of the tree as she hauled herself to her feet once more. Her lungs burned with exhaustion and spots danced before her eyes from the force of the impact.

A screech sounded from behind, closer than the first had been, and exhaustion gave way as a fresh spike of adrenaline tore through her system. She shoved off from the tree and ran on, weaving and woozy.

Minutes ago (how could it only be minues?), when the first few raindrops had started to fall the members of the wedding party had grumbled, but tried to press on with the ceremony. Abigail had even laughed a little when her fiance had whispered to her that at least things could only get better in their married life from that point on.

She’d had to yell out her ‘I do’ to be heard over the sound of thunder that had started to rumble overhead, but even as the sky darkened above she had felt euphoric that the moment she’d been waiting for through all those long months had finally come at last.

Then the screaming had started.

The creature had shot out from between the trees with a shrieking cry that had triggered all of those hardwired instincts that Abigail’s ancestors had needed when dire wolves and saber toothed-tigers had stalked them through the ancient forests. Guests had scattered in all directions after their first sight of the thing, but Abigail had frozen in place as her eyes had locked with the obsidian-black stare of the monster. 

It had stalked toward her with its lips peeled back in an all-too-human grin which revealed a row of yellowed fangs, and she had felt her heart seize up in her chest at the sight.

Abigail’s brand-new husband had stepped in between her and the creature, spreading his arms wide and shouting wordless nonsense at the top of his lungs at it. In the back of her mind, somewhere between the waves of terror and confusion crashing against her sanity, Abigail recognized it as a tactic used to scare away bears that a park ranger had shown them on a camping trip several years ago.

The creature had paused and cocked its head to the side in a curiously bird-like gesture at the man’s aggressive stance.

Then it had screeched and leapt forward with its talons outstretched. The raking claws had shredded through both the rented tuxedo and the flesh beneath it with equal ease, and the man she loved fell to the ground with an agonized scream. Abigail's mind had raced as she tried to think of something, anything, she could do to save him.

At that moment Abigail learned a very important fact about herself; namely that she was the type of person who would rather be a cowardly but alive widow than a brave but dead wife.

She turned and ran, doing her best to block out the whimpering sounds of pain behind her from her mind as she did.

She had barely made it a few steps when the storm which had been brewing overhead had finally lost its patience, and the rain began to fall in earnest.

Between the blinding rain, the crashing thunder and the surreal feeling of sick terror twisting through Abigail’s gut, she had lost track of where anything was as she stumbled blindly through the forest trail in search of the parking lot.

Abigail could hear the sound of heavy feet pounding through the mud behind her and she knew at that moment that she would never be able to run fast enough to escape.

She was determined to try, though.

With a final push of effort Abigail threw every ounce of energy that she had left into her legs, ignoring the stabbing stitch in her side and the taste of acid in her mouth as she took a sharp turn down the path and saw the trees ahead give away to a flat expanse of pavement.

Her car was parked right up at the front, the “Just Married” decorations which her friends and family had applied were soaked and torn to pieces by the rain and wind but she felt her heart soar as she realized that escape was possible.

And then she remembered that the keys were in her purse, which had been left back on the picnic table in the clearing where the ceremony had taken place.

Abigail heard that hateful shrieking howl for the final time, and then turned.

The creature was paused at the edge of the tree line, watching her with its flat unblinking stare.

For a few heartbeats the two faced each other, and Abigail felt her breath catch in her throat.

Then it turned and walked back down the path from which it came, leaving her alone.

Abigail's knees buckled right out from under her with exhaustion, then she collapsed against the side of her car and slid down to the rough gravel surface of the parking lot.

It was insane. Impossible. Something out of an urban legend that locals used to trick gullible out-of-towners.

The North Woods Monster was real… the Owl Lady was real.

  
  


* * *

  
  


“You don’t have to do this,” the girl pleaded.

“I know,” whispered the hooded figure that stalked toward her, gripping a gnarled staff in her hand, “But I want to.”

“Please,” the girl said with a hitch in her voice as she raised her own staff, “I don’t want to hurt you… I never wanted to hurt you.”

The hooded figure smiled crookedly.

“You won’t,” she said, “I won’t ever let you get close enough to hurt me again.”

She flourished the staff in an elaborate twirl which ended abruptly when the length of wood slipped from her grasp and the gnarled end smacked her on the side of the head with a sharp THWACK!

“Luz!” the girl exclaimed as she rushed over to the ground where Luz Noceda lay stunned on the forest floor.

“Aw farts, I thought I had it that time,” Luz mumbled as she rubbed the swelling bump rising beneath her untidy mop of brown hair.

“You really shouldn’t try to show off so much if you always end up getting hurt like that,” the girl said with a smile in her voice.

Luz staggered back to her feet and retrieved her old tree branch ‘staff’, giving it a much simpler flourish before she planted it on the ground in front of her.

“Nonsense,” Luz said, “Anyway you know that Hecate would want to be showing off as much as possible in front of Azura before their climactic battle. She’s feeling heartbroken and betrayed, but still deep down in love with her mortal enemy and needs to prove just how strong she is. I was acting perfectly in-character.”

The girl giggled.

“Right up until your little accident I was totally buying it, yeah,” she said, “Are you sure you aren’t secretly an evil witch in real life?”

“Well, if I told you that then it wouldn’t be a secret anymore, would it?” Luz said with a wink.

The girl laughed and ran a hand through her… 

Blonde? Black? Red?

Luz suddenly realized that she couldn’t tell what color the girl's hair was.

“Thanks for letting me be Azura again,” she said, “Maybe it’s a little silly to play pretend like this at our age, but I never got to do stuff like this at home when I was a kid. I'm having a lot of fun.”

She turned to Luz and gave her a shy smile.

It felt like it was a shy smile… Luz knew that it must have been… except that she couldn’t see the girl’s features at all. She knew they were there - her eyes, nose and mouth all existed - but it was like there was a fog or filter over her vision that prevented Luz from being able to see any of them clearly.

_It’s happening again,_ Luz realized.

"We aren't 'playing pretend'," Luz objected with mock-seriousness in her voice, "We're roleplaying and re-enacting scenes from a book. It's a mature hobby that can be enjoyed by dorks of all ages."

"Oh, my mistake then," the girl said in a grave tone of voice, "Would you want to re-enact another scene with me then, my extremely mature friend?"

Luz grinned.

“I’m always happy to re-enact some Azura scenes together anytime you want ________,” Luz said.

She knew that she must have said a name, but there was nothing but an empty hole in the sentence where the syllables that formed the shape of that name would have fit.

Luz watched herself with a sense of growing detachment as she chased after the girl through the small patch of forested land behind her house. They laughed together and exchanged quotes of dialogue from The Good Witch Azura as they struck dramatic poses with their tree-branch staves.

She couldn’t tell just by looking how old she was at this point… probably too old to be playing make-believe with a friend at any rate by the look of things.

Too young to have actually had any friends at that point in her life either, for that matter.

The pair stumbled into a clearing and slumped down together on a log, panting from a mix of exhaustion and laughter.

“Hey... could you show me that trick again?” Luz asked after a short pause to catch her breath.

Luz still couldn’t see through the infuriating whatever-it-was that shrouded her face, but she knew that the girl beside her had bitten her lip and hesitated at the sound of that request.

“Please,” Luz asked, “I promise I won’t ask again for at least a month.”

The girl nodded once.

“I’ll hold you to that Noceda,” she said in a stern voice.

Even through the murky strangeness of the dream Luz could hear the softness behind the steel in her words, and felt an indescribable pang in her chest.

A hot sting pricked against Luz’s cheek. Dark flakes had begun to drift down out of the sky, like the shadow of snow.

_Not yet_ , Luz thought with a snarl.

_Not again!_

She locked her eyes on the faceless girl as she extended her index finger and began to trace a circle through the air.

The flakes of ash swept in harder from above, carried on a scorching wind. Luz could feel the heat rising as the edges of the horizon grew hazy with the ring of smoke closing in around them.

The air smelled of flame and loss, and Luz's skin prickled with blossoms of pain as ash flakes peppered her body, but she did not look away from the girl.

A circle of light flared into being in midair along the path that the girl's finger had made and then collapsed into a hovering luminescent orb. She extended her hand out to Luz, offering her the small glowing ball that floated just above her palm.

“Take it,” the girl said with an unseen smile.

Her voice was faint and distorted by the roar of the firestorm which now surrounded them.

Luz reached out her hand but before she could touch the ball she was jerked away from that moment, leaving her body behind as her perspective drifted off. With a mixture of frustration and resignation she watched herself and the girl as they were consumed by the wave of flames that roared in over the landscape, leaving nothing but cinders behind.

With a gasp Luz’s eyes shot open, wide and wild with terror and the echoes of phantom pain singing through her nerves.

The window by her bed rattled in its pane as a strong gust of wind blew by. The storm which had set in that afternoon had quieted down from its earlier fury, but the rain still hadn’t stopped even when Luz had finally dragged herself to bed.

The storm had also brought a sharp chill to the air along with the rain, but Luz felt herself burning up despite it. Her whole body was fever-hot and a pounding ache had settled in at her temples.

This was nothing new for Luz, unfortunately.

_That was… the third one this month?,_ she thought to herself.

_Or was it the fourth?_

Luz reached for the phone which lay atop the dresser by her bedside but then stopped herself, and grabbed the small notebook beside it instead. The room was pitch-dark except for the occasional lightning flash that could be seen through the window, but when Luz touched the pen in her hand to the notebook she knew that she could trace out the shape of the light glyph as instinctively as she could write her own name.

Maybe even easier at this point considering how messy her handwriting was at times.

_Might as well try something new since I'm already up_ , Luz thought.

Luz closed her eyes and conjured up the familiar image of the light spell in her mind and then visualized a change. She pictured the soft white-yellow light of the spell shifting into a gentle blue shade and expanded the size of the orb until it was about the size of a grapefruit. She tapped her finger to the page, keeping the altered image firmly in her thoughts as she did.

For a moment nothing happened, and her breath caught in her throat. Old fears that had dogged her for almost half of her life returned full force in these moments.

What if there was no magic this time? What if she really was crazy like everyone had said? What if none of it was real? Had never been real?

The moment passed as the edges of the paper began to curl inward of their own volition into a ball which rose up into the air. The wad of paper vanished in a puff of energy, leaving a small glowing blue orb the size of a ping-pong ball in its place.

Luz released her held breath and cupped the light spell in her hands, savoring the slightly prickly feel of its magical energy caressing the skin of her palms.

The feverish heat which had suffused her body had begun to dissipate and the sharp pain of the migraine she had felt coming on had started to ease slightly as well. Years of experience had taught her that the less she thought of the dreams after she woke up, the less they could hurt her.

This had been a strong one though, and those usually required a distraction.

She kept her mind focused on the light orb in front of her.

_Looks like color control is possible, but the size of the orb is still purely dependent on the size of the glyph_ , Luz thought clinically as she compared the spell in her hands to the image she had formed in her mind prior to activating the glyph.

Luz raised her cupped hand and breathed out slowly through her nose as she _pushed_ the light orb with her mind, willing it to drift through the air toward her bedroom door.

_A normal person would probably have just used their phone as a flashlight_ , Luz thought to herself as she got up from the bed and walked toward the door, while keeping the light orb’s movement firmly in mind.

_Then again, why waste a perfectly good excuse to practice some magic?_

She followed the light orb out from her room and over to the bathroom down the darkened hallway. The blue glow of the light spell reflecting off the dusty bathroom mirror lent an ethereal air to the rather shabby apartment - like an underwater cavern lined with faded wallpaper. Luz pulled open the medicine cabinet and began to rummage through its contents, squinting at the labels which were difficult to read in the unusual light cast by her spell.

The bathroom light switch was right there, but she stubbornly refused to acknowledge it as she continued to try and find the bottle she was looking for in the dim blue light.

“I should have just stuck with regular yellow,” Luz grumbled to herself.

She knew from long experience that the headaches which always accompanied her fire-dreams, as she called them, were persistent and that she wouldn’t have any hope of getting a half-decent sleep without some pharmaceutical help.

Not to mention the fact that the unseasonably cold air caused by the storm was sending twinges of pain all through her arms. She resisted the instinctive urge to scratch at the crisscrossing welts of scar tissue that twined their way around the outside of her forearms. Scratching had never helped.

Luz finished sifting through the contents of the medicine cabinet, opened a bottle of over-the-counter pain relievers and then dry swallowed two pills with practiced ease.

She combed her fingers back through her short, sweat slicked mop of dark brown hair and pointed at her tired-looking reflection in the mirror.

"You are going to be okay," she told herself in a firm voice.

The Luz in the mirror didn't look entirely convinced by that, but that was fine. She'd been having a rough night after all.

Luz knew the effects of the medication weren’t really supposed to kick in for at least another half-hour, but she still felt a slight lessening of the pressure at her temples and a dulling of the ache in her scars.

_Thank god for the placebo effect_ , she thought with a relieved smile.

Her task complete, Luz stumbled back toward her bedroom. Now that the spike of adrenaline that had woken her up from the dream had dissipated, her body had remembered just how late it actually was and how little sleep she had been running on. The light spell at her side had weaved and bobbed about almost drunkenly as her concentration flickered between controlling the movement of the spell and controlling her own sleep-deprived body.

She settled back into the bed once more, pulled the thin blankets up to her neck and shifted around to try and find the one good spot on her pillow where all the stuffing had migrated to.

Luz tried, unsuccessfully, to avoid thinking of the fire-dream but it was like resisting the urge to poke at a loose tooth with her tongue or pick at an itching scab.

The details of the dream had rapidly faded from her mind shortly after waking, as always, and left her with only the vaguest of impressions and a familiar sense of frustration.

She had asked Eda about them, just once, but the old witch hadn’t appeared to have any idea of what Luz was talking about as she fumbled through her halting and confused explanation of the dreams.

_Maybe it would be worth it to ask her again tomorrow though_ , Luz thought as she dismissed the light spell with a glance and closed her tired eyes.

_They’ve been coming more and more often lately - I’ve had more fire-dreams in the past three months than I did in the last year._

_If nothing else maybe she’ll know how to make a good sleep potion that would keep me from having them anymore._

Strangely, that thought brought Luz no peace of mind and she immediately dismissed the idea.

The dreams were painful, sometimes devastatingly so, but the thought of never having one again was somehow even more painful.

They were the only times that Luz was able to see _her,_ after all.

Whoever she was.

  
  


* * *

  
  


The light of the rising sun rippled strangely as it passed through the dome of enchantment surrounding New Bonesborough, though no one standing outside of its borders would have noticed the effect.

It would have been a very poor illusion spell if just anyone was able to see through it that easily, after all.

Amity Blight always enjoyed the sight of the sunrise from inside the dome though, and usually made a point of taking her flying staff up high into the air so she could watch the way the dawn's first rays would bend and shift around the thick layers of magic which surrounded the small village before they finally pierced the screen and brought their light to the witches and demons living within its borders.

Unfortunately, Amity's staff had been giving her trouble again lately and she felt it was better to not risk taking it up too high this morning. She hadn't enjoyed the week she'd spent in a cast after the last time her staff's enchantment had failed her and sent her crashing to the ground while she had been chasing a fleeing demon through the woods. The healers had insisted that she'd been very lucky - not even magic would have saved her if that fall had resulted in a broken neck instead of a broken arm.

She flew low over the mostly-empty streets of the town, taking the scenic route from her small cottage on her way to work. The only citizens out at this hour were a few witches and demons setting up their market stalls for the morning. The various merchants all gave Amity a friendly wave of their hand, paw, claw or other appropriate appendage when she passed over them and she returned their greetings with a crisp salute.

Amity lived close enough to the Guardian Hall that she could have easily walked to work instead of flown, but she enjoyed the feel of the breeze in her face. She also enjoyed the way that same breeze rustled the fabric of her short white Guardian cloak and sent it whipping out behind her like the capes worn by those fictional superheroes that humans were so fond of, though she would never have admitted that to anyone.

Amity knew that with enough time the thrill of wearing the uniform would fade, but she was determined to enjoy it for as long as she could. The effort it had taken her to qualify for the Guardians had been brutal, and if she wanted to feel like a superhero for a few minutes each morning as a reward for that effort then that was nobody’s business but hers.

The Guardian Hall loomed up ahead of Amity's flight path, and she watched as the first rays of morning light fell upon the tall tower of snowy white stone, bathing it in liquid gold. The hall was one of the most impressive buildings in New Bonesborough, and resembled a small castle with its central lookout tower and high surrounding wall of heavy stone blocks that were overgrown with a thick mat of climbing vines.

The whole structure gave off an aura of strength and fortitude, as though the Hall was a great beast that had watched over the town for centuries like an ancient and stalwart protector. The witches who had designed it had done an excellent job at faking its archaic appearance, especially considering the fact that the building was actually around thirty years old and the town itself just a little more than twice its age.

Amity landed her staff at the foot of the stone steps which led up to the doorway with an unpleasant jolt, but managed to avoid losing her balance. She made a mental note to definitely get her staff looked at after her shift ended, gave one of the stylized griffon statues that flanked the steps a pat on the talon for luck and then made her way up the stairs.

In keeping with its exterior, the interior of the Guardian Hall had also been built with grandeur in mind: the vaulted ceiling of stone blocks arched high overhead and framed numerous skylights of stained glass which depicted various legends and significant moments in witch history, providing beauty as well as illumination. The building usually had a hushed feeling to it, like a library or cathedral, that encouraged whispers and quiet contemplation.

That sense of solemnity seemed to have all gone out the window today, though, and Amity was almost knocked over flat on her ass when an older guardian shoved past her and sped out the door with a barked cry of: “Watch it rookie!”

Amity had barely recovered from that display of rudeness when she realized that the rest of the Hall was in a similar state of chaos. Guardians in their distinctive white cloaks were rushing past each other in all directions, shouting back and forth in a babble of voices. With a start, Amity also realized that there were an unusually high number of humans in the building as well.

Any number greater than zero would have been unusually high, but there had to be at least a dozen there that Amity could see and as she watched she could see that even more were being hustled in and out of various side doors, which made taking an accurate count nearly impossible.

Most of the humans seemed to be dressed in formal clothing, although their garments were soaked and muddied. They were all restrained in some way - either bound up in stasis spells or rendered unconscious by a sleep charm, but a few were still awake and clearly confused by the situation they now found themselves in. One woman in particular, dressed in a very elaborate white gown that was splattered from head to toe with mud and leaves, seemed on the verge of hysterics and was resisting every sleep spell being thrown her way.

As Amity walked through the chaotic scene she could have sworn that she heard the woman scream something about the Owl Lady, and she felt her gut lurch at the mention of New Bonesborough’s most infamous eccentric.

_Well, this can’t be good,_ she thought to herself.

A large hand gripped tight at Amity's shoulder and she spun around in surprise to find herself face to face with another guardian.

"Blight," the older guardian said in a gruff voice, "The commander wanted to see you in her office as soon as you reported in."

Amity bit back the urge to snap at the man for startling her and gave him a sharp nod instead.

"Thanks Steve," she said, and then turned to rush toward the central tower as fast as she could.

The commander was not well known for her great stores of patience.

Amity had barely tapped once on the door of the office when she heard an irritable voice scream through the wood.

“In the Titan’s unspeakable name, what now!” 

Amity winced, swallowed down her initial reaction to retreat back to the safe chaos of the hallway and then opened the door instead.

“Guardian Blight reporting for duty as ordered, ma’am,” Amity said, keeping her voice level and her eyes averted from her commander's scowling face.

This wasn’t terribly difficult since Commander Kikimora was somewhat less than half of Amity’s height when she was standing, and even the tall chair and raised platform of her desk still didn’t bring her close to Amity’s eye level.

Amity realized that she wasn't the only other visitor in the commander's office this morning, because seated in the chair across from the small demon was a tall witch with straight coal black hair and a pair of hard, sapphire eyes which were currently staring daggers at Kikimora.

The small demon blew out a frustrated breath and beckoned Amity inside her office with an irritable wave of her claw.

"Come in, Blight," she said, "I understand that you're already acquainted with my esteemed guest?"

Amity nodded and then made a slight bow toward the seated witch.

"Good morning counselor Clawthorne," Amity said, trying to contain the mixture of confusion and surprise she felt at seeing her old mentor once more on top of everything else that seemed to be happening today.

The corner of the counselor’s lips twitched ever so slightly upward as she turned back in her chair to give Amity an appraising look.

"You can just call me Lilith now, Amity. We’re all adults here," she said.

Amity's eyebrows raised a fraction of an inch, but she managed to keep the surprise from showing on her face otherwise.

_Maybe she's gotten friendlier since we last met?_ , Amity thought as she recalled the older witch’s insistence on strict formality during their magic lessons together.

_Or maybe she's just gotten better at faking it now that she's spent so much time in politics._

"I was told that you wanted to see me this morning, Commander," Amity said, turning her attention back to Kikimora, who had sat silently fuming throughout the exchange of pleasantries.

“Yes. I take it you’ve noticed the little situation that we have going on outside?” Kikimora asked Amity with her usual sarcasm.

Amity nodded her head a fraction of an inch.

“Yes, it does seem a little busy this morning,” she said blandly.

“A little busy, she says,” Kikimora muttered under her breath, “It’s an unprecedented disaster in the making is what it is.”

“What happened?” Amity asked, no longer able to contain her curiosity.

Kikimora blew out the irritated sigh of someone who has had to explain the same story far too many times, but was going to do it just this once more, and then she began to speak.

“Some humans decided that it would be a wonderful idea to have a wedding in the forest right outside our doorstep - apparently one of them used to go camping here with their parents or something like that and it was a sentimental spot for them,” Kikimora said, “Which was fine. We had Guardians patrolling the borders of the town who were ready to turn back any humans that wandered too far from their celebration with a quick illusion or mind-control charm. It should have been no problem at all.”

Kikimora growled, exposing a mouthful of needle-sharp teeth.

“But then of course, counselor Clawthorne’s Titan-damned sister had to have one of her _episodes_ ,” Kikimora spat.

Amity flinched. Everyone in New Bonesborough knew the tale of the Owl Lady, who was the victim of a curse that could transform her into a nightmarish beast. Many whispered that she would never have been allowed to roam free at all if she weren’t the sister of one of the community’s most influential leaders.

That same leader was now turning the full force of her icy stare at the seated demon who had just insulted her sister. Amity could see Lilith’s well manicured fingers twitch in the armrests of her chair as though they were barely holding back the urge to start aiming spells at the commander.

"We don't even know for certain that it really was Edalyn in the first place," Lilith objected in a sharp voice. "She's had her curse well under control - there hasn't been a single reported incident in years!"

“Well apparently her control is slipping, because not only was she spotted by well over a dozen humans at that damned wedding but she also mauled one of them badly,” Kikimora returned in an equally sharp tone, “The healers are working on him now - with luck he’ll survive.”

Amity drew in a sharp breath. While there were many dark rumors about the Owl Lady, she had never actually been known to have injured or killed anyone - either witch or human.

“That’s terrible,” Amity said, unable to stop herself.

“It gets worse,” the commander continued in a grim voice, “One of the witches who lives in Cypress, the human city just beyond the forest, works at one of their news reporting agencies. He contacted the Guardians this morning to let us know that humans all over the area have called in to claim that they had spotted a mysterious flying creature last night.”

Amity watched as a bleak look settled over Lilith's face at that announcement.

“Was there any video or photographic evidence taken during those sightings by the humans?” she asked.

Kikimora shook her head.

“That’s the one piece of good news in this whole fiasco,” she said, “The storm last night ruined any chance of taking clear pictures. The only ‘evidence’ the humans have is so murky and low quality that it could be just about anything in those videos... at least, those that we've seen so far anyway.”

“Well, that’s good at least,” Amity offered.

“If this had happened during a clear summer afternoon, though, it would have been a nightmare,” the commander said, “I miss the days before humans invented that damned internet-thing. It used to be so easy to just modify a few memories or pull the film out of a camera if they saw one of us doing magic - now even human children carry around devices in their pockets that can broadcast anything they see to the whole world in the blink of an eye.”

"Even if any of this is true," Lilith began, "None of it is Edalyn's fault. It's not a crime to be cursed - she's just as much of a victim here as anyone else."

"I think the dying human that my healers are trying to save might be just slightly more of a victim here than the creature that attacked him," Kikimora barked back.

Lilith's eyes flared and Amity could feel the low hum in her bones as magic started to coalesce and crackle around the older witch.

There was a moment of tense silence.

Kikimora stared back at Lilith blandly, as if pretending not to notice the sudden surge in magic coursing through the witch’s veins. After several more agonizing seconds the moment finally passed, and Amity breathed a sigh of relief when she felt the power surrounding the enraged counselor begin to die down.

"I sympathize with your situation, counselor," Kikimora began, "Truly I do. But whether it was intentional or not, the fact remains that your sister is putting our entire community in danger when she gets spotted by so many humans."

“What are you planning to do, then?” Lilith asked.

Kikimora rubbed at her temples and gave the witch a flat stare.

“I’ve just been in communication with your fellow members of the Council - they’ve taken my recommendation and decided unanimously that Edalyn Clawthorne must be brought in, both for her protection as well as for the safety of the community,” Kikimora said. “If she’s lost control of her curse it would be better to keep her contained somewhere here in New Bonesborough, instead of leaving her to roam free out there among the humans.”

"You went behind my back on this Kiki?" Lilith asked, with genuine hurt in her voice.

"I'm only doing what is necessary to keep us all safe," Kikimora said. "And I didn't go behind your back - you haven't been one of us since you left to go polish a chair on the Council."

"Let me be the one to bring her in then," Lilith said quickly. "She'll listen to me... probably."

Kikmora shook her head.

"Only a Guardian is authorized to bring in a lawbreaker," Kikimora said, "And I have the perfect one in mind for that assignment."

Amity felt a sinking feeling in her gut.

Lilith looked back and forth between Kikimora and Amity and then turned a baleful stare on the demon.

"You can't be serious - she's still practically a child," she said.

_Well, so much for us all being adults here,_ Amity thought.

Kikimora gave Amity a look that was utterly devoid of pity.

“Well, normally we wouldn’t send our newest, greenest recruit to go apprehend a cursed fugitive all by herself, no,” Kikimora said with heavy sarcasm, “But in case you haven’t noticed all of our more senior Guardians are currently busy wrangling the crowd of humans that spotted your sister during her rampage so that we can begin extracting and destroying their memories of her. Perhaps if a certain member of the Council hadn’t slashed our budget to the bone recently we might have had more resources to deal with this situation.”

Lilith grunted an acknowledgement of the argument.

"Plus," Kikimora added, "You were the one who trained her yourself, weren't you? Don't you have more faith in your student’s skills?"

Lilith gave Kikimora a humorless smile.

"I have every confidence that Guardian Blight will be able to perform her duties perfectly," she said in a carefully diplomatic voice.

Amity bit back on her annoyance. Being the newest and youngest Guardian was already bad enough without also being used as a game piece in some sort of power play between the two rivals.

Still, she had a job to do and she was going to do it as best she could.

Amity nodded.

“Understood, ma’am,” she said, “When do I leave?”

“Soon,” Kikimora answered. “We’ll need to get you some clothes to wear in the human city and cast a few illusions to help you blend in with the round-ears. We have the address of the business that Edalyn owns in Cypress - some sort of used item shop. Do you know how to navigate human cities?”

Amity nodded hesitantly.

“Yes, I’ve taken a few trips outside of town when I was younger,” she answered in a quiet voice.

"Authorized trips?" the commander asked with a raised eyebrow.

Amity blushed, and then cursed herself internally for doing so.

_You’re 23 years old Amity - no one can send you to detention anymore for stuff you did as a kid_ , she reminded herself.

"Not always, no," she admitted.

Kikimora gave her a small smile.

“Relax, Blight. You're not the first young witch to get curious and slip past the barrier,” she assured her. “At least you’d have an easier time blending in among them than I would have.”

Amity returned the smile with a very small upturn of her lips. Her parents’ own reaction when they had found out about her youthful adventures had been a great deal less understanding.

She felt a sharp lance of guilt pierce through her heart at the memory, but shoved it back down deep with practiced ease.

“Should I start preparing my disguise for the assignment then, ma’am?” Amity asked.

Kikimora nodded.

“Yes, I think you know the way to the illusions and undercover operations department, correct?” she asked.

“Yes ma’am,” Amity said.

“Then go - the sooner we get this whole situation under control, the sooner we can all breathe easily again,” Kikimora said. “We’re just lucky that the news hasn’t reached the rest of the town yet. The last thing I need is a crowd of hysterical witches and demons outside my door demanding to know how we are going to protect them when the human mobs come howling for our blood.”

Amity turned to leave but before she could open the door, the commander made a noise in her throat.

Amity paused and turned back to see Kikimora giving her a frank look.

“Guardian Blight… Amity. I know this assignment might feel like we’re throwing you to the werewolves, but I wouldn’t task you with this unless I was sure that you were the right witch for the job,” Kikimora said.

Amity felt a small spark of pride in her chest at the rare praise from her commander.

“Thank you, ma’am,” she said.

"Try not to let my sister get under your skin," Lilith added. "She's very good at it. Angry witches don't make good decisions."

Amity gave Lilith a polite half-bow again.

"I'll keep that in mind, counselor," she said, and then shut the door firmly behind her.

When she reached the undercover operations department, the harassed looking witch in charge gave her a quick once-over and then began pulling out various items from the trunks of human clothing they had available.

"We've got a lot of Guardians out right now on assignment, so there isn't much available," he said apologetically as he handed Amity a stack of human-style garments.

She looked over the clothing he'd given her with a sinking feeling in her chest.

"Are you sure this is all you've got?" she asked.

The witch shrugged his shoulders.

"Sorry, but everything else I've got in here is way too big or too small for you," he said.

"I don't know when you were last around humans, but I'm telling you that I’m going to stick out like a sore thumb in this stuff," Amity said.

The witch waved a dismissive claw at that.

"Don't worry about it - humans are clueless," he assured her. "Plus, there's a standard procedure that always works if you start getting too many weird looks."

Amity sighed as she shoved the bundle of clothes under her arm.

"And what would that be?" she asked.

"Just say that you're from some place called 'Florida'," the witch said, "Apparently people from that kingdom have a reputation for being weird, even by human standards."

_We really need to get better training for witch-human relations around here soon_ , Amity thought.

"Thanks, I'll keep that in mind," she said, with only the slightest roll of her eyes.

The illusionist department, thankfully, was able to do their work quickly and efficiently without any issues, and it wasn’t long before Amity was staring at her altered face in the mirror. She reached up to touch the pointed tips of her ears hidden behind the illusion spell to reassure herself that they were still there.

The demon in charge of casting the illusions on Amity gave her a sharp slap on the wrist with one of their flipper-like hands.

"Don't mess with the spell too much," they said, "You don't want the magic to suddenly give out on you when you're in a crowd of humans just because you couldn't stop poking at it."

Amity dutifully lowered her hands, but still found the sight of her changed face deeply unsettling. It was strange how something as simple as the rounding of her ears, blunting of her fangs and shifting of her eyes from their normal golden-amber shade to a more common brown was enough to make her seem like a totally different person.

"Aren't you going to do anything about my hair?" she asked as she gestured at the wild mane of mint-green hair that flowed down her back.

The illusionist demon shook their scaly head.

"Nah, that should pass just fine," they said as they indicated the chestnut brown roots of Amity's hair, "Witches aren't the only ones who dye it, you know? If anything, it’ll help you fit in more."

It was already early afternoon by the time that all the preparations had been completed and Amity was finally ready to leave for the city.

Now fully dressed in her ridiculous human garb and still barely resisting the urge to poke at her cosmetic illusions, she had just made her way out of the building when she had spotted Lilith at the foot of the steps leaning against one of the griffon statues in the worst fake-casual pose that Amity had ever seen.

Amity considered trying to quietly get on her staff and fly past her old mentor unnoticed, but dropped the idea. With her luck, that would be the moment her staff's faulty enchantment chose to give out and dump her right at Lilith's feet.

"Counselor Clawthorne," Amity said in a polite tone as she met her at the foot of the steps.

"Amity," Lilith said.

Her eyebrows shot up at the sight of Amity's human disguise, and one hand went up to hide the smile forming on her lips.

“Is _that_ what humans are wearing these days?” she asked.

"I sincerely hope not. They were just low on clothes in my size," Amity said defensively.

Lilith shook her head.

"Believe me, it wasn't much better when I was a Guardian myself," she said. "The old head of undercover operations had gotten all of her ideas about what humans dressed like from some of their entertainment media that we'd found. I kept getting stopped by people asking if there was a science fiction convention in town when I was on my first undercover assignment in the city."

Amity giggled at the mental image of her stern, dignified mentor having to put up with that.

"That must have been an ordeal," she said.

"Well, I survived - though I gave that witch who thought that a Star Trek uniform was a good way to blend in unnoticed with a crowd of humans a very sharp piece of my mind after I got back," she said.

"I don't imagine you waited around for hours just to tell me a few of your old work stories though," Amity said.

Lilith nodded.

"You were always ready to get straight to the point," she said. "It's an excellent quality in a Guardian."

"And skilled flattery is an excellent quality in a counselor seeking another term," Amity pointed out.

"Cynical too," Lilith said in a dry voice, "It's like you were born for the job."

"What's the real reason you're here?" Amity asked.

Lilith glanced around slowly to make sure that no one was close enough to overhear them before she leaned in closer.

"The truth is that I was the one who wanted you for this assignment," she said quietly. "But I had to make Kiki think it was her idea. If it had been up to her she would have left it to Inquisitor Wrath and his goon squad to bring in Edalyn - or worse, the Demon Hunters.”

“Why did you want it to be me?” Amity asked.

“Because nothing about this situation feels right,” Lilith insisted. “Kikimora thinks that I’m too close to this, and maybe I am, but I know my sister. Edalyn can be wild and reckless, but she’s never hurt anyone while she was transformed before.”

“It could just be that she’s losing control of the curse,” Amity pointed out.

Lilith winced at that, but then nodded to concede the point.

“It could be,” she agreed. “I haven’t completely discounted the possibility that the curse has gotten the better of her. But I don’t want to condemn her on the word of a few human witnesses that wouldn't be able to tell the difference between an actual demon and a prankster in a silly mask if their lives depended on it.”

Amity looked at the anxious expression on the older witch’s face and couldn’t hold back the question that had been on her mind all morning.

“I would have thought that you’d be happy about this situation,” she said. “You’re always saying that witches shouldn’t be mixing with humans at all, and I’m supposed to be bringing your sister back to the community. Isn't that what you wanted anyway?”

Lilith shook her head sadly.

“I would love it if Edalyn did decide to come home,” she said. “But I want that to be _her_ choice. I don’t want her to be dragged back here in chains like an animal. She’d never forgive me.”

“I suppose that’s true,” Amity agreed.

“I also knew that if you were assigned to this task, you would at least try to find out the truth and not just jump to conclusions,” Lilith continued. “If Eda really is guilty, then she’s guilty and should be brought in immediately - but I want you to look for evidence to prove it, or to prove that she’s innocent if she didn’t do it so that the Council and the other Guardians will leave her be.”

“Is that all?” Amity asked.

“Yes,” Lilith said.

“Then you wasted your time waiting here counselor,” Amity said, “Because I was already going to do that anyway.”

Lilith smiled.

“Thank you, Amity,” she said.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Luz wrinkled her nose as she stirred the simmering beaker of turquoise colored slime that bubbled over the Bunsen burner.

“This stuff has to be, without a doubt, the nastiest thing that I’ve ever smelled in my entire life,” she said.

“You’re still just a kid,” Eda remarked, “Trust me when I tell you that there are _way_ nastier smells out there just waiting for you to discover them as you master the fine art of brewing potions.”

“Gosh, there’s just so much to look forward to,” Luz snarked.

“Well, that’s the glamorous life of an apprentice witch - you humans think magic is all sparkles and sunshine, but mostly it’s just kinda gross,” Eda said. “At least, the fun sort of magic is, anyway.”

“What’s this potion that we’re brewing up supposed to do again?” Luz asked as she grabbed the vial of faintly humming green powder that Eda handed her and then tipped it into the beaker.

There was a flash of brilliant silvery light from the beaker, followed by a plume of hissing ochre smoke that took the form of a shrieking reptilian face before it quickly dissipated away.

The utterly vile smell that had burned its way into Luz's sinuses was gone now, replaced by a slightly spicy scent which had a hint of lavender to it.

Eda leaned in closer and inspected the contents of the beaker, which had now turned a luminous red color. She then dipped a fingertip into the goop to taste it and hummed appreciatively.

“Dragon-venom brew has a number of fascinating properties depending on how it is used: it can create undefeatable weapons, briefly give life to inanimate objects and even allow someone to speak the secret language of the dead,” Eda said.

"Oh wow," Luz breathed as she stared at the shimmering crimson potion with a newfound appreciation.

“But mostly I just needed it as a hangover cure right now," Eda said in an offhand way. "Mama went a little too hard on the appleblood last night and my head is killing me.”

There was a whining whimper of agreement from underneath the table where Luz had been working on the potion.

“King did too now that I think about it,” Eda added, “Could you pour a little into his dish for me?”

Luz grabbed the ceramic dog dish off the floor and dumped a generous dollop of the viscous red potion into it before she set it back down at her feet. 

The small demon curled up under the table sniffed at the air, lifted the floral-print eyemask off of his bony head and then flopped face first into the bowl with a groan. Luz grit her teeth at the unpleasant ringing sound of the ceramic dish colliding with King’s exposed skull, but the demon didn’t seem to mind at all as he slurped up the potion.

“Oh that’s so much better,” the demon sighed in his high-pitched voice, once he’d guzzled the last drop of potion down. “Now I only want to slaughter _most_ of the beings on this wretched world, instead of all of them.”

“Will I be one of the ones spared from your terrible wrath?” Luz asked in a teasing tone.

King waved a claw at her magnanimously.

“Of course,” he said, “I’m going to need someone around that knows how to give good tummy rubs. It’s a surprisingly difficult skill to master.”

Eda set the now-empty beaker of dragon-venom potion down on the table with a clink and wiped off her lips with the back of her hand.

“Well, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way,” she said, “We can start with the real work for today.”

“What’s that?” Luz asked.

“I’ve got a big order for vanishing cream that we need to mix up by tonight for a very important client,” Eda said.

“What makes them so important?” 

“They paid upfront in cash,” King explained.

“Is there any possible use for a cream that turns you invisible that _isn’t_ incredibly shady?” Luz asked.

“Hey, I just sell them the potions - it’s up to the clients to decide what they want to do with them,” Eda said with a shrug.

Luz gave Eda a flat stare and planted her hands on her hips disapprovingly.

"Oh don't give me that look," Eda said, "You know I wouldn't be selling this stuff to someone that was going to use it for anything creepy. I think they just want to try and rob a bank or something."

"Oh, well as long as I'm _only_ an accessory to robbery that's just fine then," Luz said dryly.

"That's the spirit," Eda said, pointedly ignoring the obvious sarcasm in the younger woman's tone.

Luz flipped through the battered and stained notebook that contained the sum total of all her knowledge of magical potions, which she'd worked hard to gain over the past few months, until she found the entry for Eda's special invisibility ointment. She ran down the recipe list with her finger, and then realized that they were low on some of the key ingredients.

"Do you know if we have any mandrake roots left?" Luz called out to Eda.

"Nope," King answered.

Luz turned and saw that the fuzzy demon had returned to his favorite perch on a cushion near the window, resting in the light of a sunbeam.

"How would you know that? You don't mix any potions," Luz said.

"I ate the last one yesterday," he informed her.

"King!" Eda shouted, "Those things are expensive - and they don't even taste good anyway. Why did you do that?"

"I like the way they scream when you bite them," he answered in a defensive tone. "Anyway, you should be glad I got rid of that last one for you - I think it was going stale. Barely managed a whimper when I bit its legs off."

The older witch blew out an exasperated sigh and raked her long fingers through her iron grey hair.

"Alright, it's not ideal but we can work around this," Eda said, "We could probably use potatoes as a substitute."

Luz raised an eyebrow.

"Potatoes?" she asked in a flat voice.

"What? A root is a root," Eda replied.

"And that'll actually work?" Luz asked.

"Well, it probably wouldn’t be _as_ effective, no," Eda admitted. "But it might keep them invisible long enough to pull off whatever they were going to use it for... Titan willing."

"Or we could just get more mandrakes," Luz reminded her.

"Those things aren't cheap, you know," Eda griped.

"Yeah, but you don't want to be known as the lady that sells the shoddiest potions in town, right?" Luz pointed out, "We already lost a few of our customers when that one batch of fog brew went bad last month."

"Fine, then," Eda said. "Would you be able to go to the nursery downtown later today and see if they'd be able to sell us some of the plants from their 'private stock'? That witch they have working there usually has the good stuff."

  
  


"Sure thing," Luz answered with a smile.

_It's been a while since I've had a chance to go see Willow_ , she thought.

"It’s going to take a while to do the prep-work for this potion, so I guess we can start opening up the shop in the meantime," Eda said.

Luz followed Eda through the thick black curtain which separated the employee-only back room of the building from the storefront.

She wasn't quite sure _what_ Eda was supposed to be selling, since the front area of the shop was a chaotic jumble of odds-and-ends of all kinds. The shelves and racks were crammed with stuff that wasn't organized in any system that Luz had ever been able to figure out: delicate antique silver tea pots in pristine condition sat side by side with broken plastic kids meal toys from fast food restaurants, a collection of computers older than Luz was stacked into a pyramid in one corner while the opposite corner had a rack of actual swords bolted to the wall. The whole interior of the shop was illuminated by a tangle of multicolored Christmas lights that cast odd shadows all around the room.

Even on their busiest days, Luz couldn't remember seeing more than three customers in the store at the same time (and that had been a group of teenagers playing with the swords that Eda had had to chase out before one of them managed to hurt themselves).

To an outside observer, Eda's shop looked like the kind of place that was constantly on the verge of bankruptcy, but Luz knew that the old witch had a steady stream of regular clients that paid handsomely for the potions which they brewed together in the back room. Luz privately suspected that the shop served more as a convenient front to account for Eda’s income and a place where she could store all of the unusual human junk that she found so fascinating.

Luz unlocked the front door and flipped the small sign hanging in front of the window from "Sorry, we're closed" to "Sorry, we're open", then went to take her place behind the counter to wait out the first shift while Eda went back to work in the lab.

To pass the time Luz practiced tracing out the glyphs she knew from memory in a cheap spiral notebook she kept stashed under the counter, although she always left a small section of each circle that bordered the glyph uncompleted so that she wouldn't end up triggering any spells with an accidental brush of a finger in the wrong place.

She'd learned to do that the hard way when she'd nearly destroyed an entire display case full of Eda's prized collection of novelty sunglasses with an ill-placed ice glyph.

Luz compared the results of her glyph practice against the pictures saved on her phone of Eda tracing out spell-circles in the air, and swore under her breath when she noticed that she'd been leaving out an important part of the fire-spell glyph.

She tore a fresh piece of paper out from her notebook and started to draw row after row of the corrected fire-glyphs, doing her best to commit the correct shape of its design to muscle memory like she had with the handful of other glyphs that she knew by heart. She was extra careful to leave the circles uncompleted in each of those new practice glyphs.

It had taken forever to convince Eda that she was ready to play with fire magic, and Luz didn't intend to betray that trust by burning down her shop.

Luz had just started on a fourth page of practice glyphs when a tinkling sound broke her concentration, and she looked up in surprise.

Luz received three distinct moments of shock in rapid succession.

The first was the fact that the tinkling sound she’d heard had been from the bell hanging over the shop door, meaning that somehow against all odds they actually had a customer today.

The second was the fact that the customer in question was a young woman around Luz's age who looked absolutely _stunning_. Luz felt the breath catch in her throat when the stranger had turned toward her and she had taken in the sight of her delicate features: a small upturned nose, sharp cheekbones and large brown eyes accentuated by sharply drawn eyeliner. That gorgeous heart-shaped face was framed by a mane of wavy hair the same color as mint-flavored mouthwash, which was tied up in a half-tail. 

Luz was no stranger to feeling tongue-tied in the presence of a pretty girl, but for some reason the emotions surging through her mind felt like they ran deeper than simple attraction. There was something sharper there, lurking just under the surface - like the flash of a shark's fin poking out from the sea.

Before Luz could examine that emotion too closely though, the thought was blown out of her mind by the third shock which was what the attractive stranger was wearing. Luz's eyes travelled down to take in the whole ensemble: a black leather motorcycle jacket which was festooned with spiked metal studs across the shoulders, a fuzzy pink sweater with a cartoon kitten on the chest which declared that the wearer was "Im-PAWS-ibly Cute!", zebra-print patterned leggings and a pair of scuffed and worn blood-red Crocs on her feet. Even Luz, who had never been accused of being stylish, would have probably hesitated before going outside in an outfit like that.

"Um... welcome to The Owl House!" Luz said.

She felt embarrassingly proud that she'd only stammered slightly.

"Say the thing!" Eda shouted at her from behind the black curtain.

Luz grit her teeth and shot a glare at the blank face of the curtain that led back to the potions lab.

_Stupid extra-sharp witch hearing._

"Our deals are unbelievab-owl," Luz muttered.

Eda gave a snorting laugh, and Luz sighed.

She turned back to the young woman with an apologetic smile on her lips.

"Sorry, my boss thinks she's funny for some reason," Luz explained.

The bizarrely-dressed vision of loveliness didn't reply.

Luz realized that she hadn't actually said a word since she'd first entered the shop. Instead she was giving Luz a deer-in-the-headlights stare, one hand halfway poised to her mouth.

"Is something wrong?" Luz asked.

The stranger blinked several times and then shook her head quickly.

"No... I'm sorry, I just thought that you... never mind," she stammered.

"Are you okay?" Luz said.

"Yes, I'm fine! I'm just... from Florida!" the woman declared in a somewhat desperate tone of voice.

_Okay, so she's gorgeous but also kind of a weirdo_ , Luz thought.

_Well, hey, at least I know we have something in common now._

"Well... okay then, if you say so. Were you looking for anything in particular today?" Luz asked, "Because if you are I probably can't help you - even I don't know what we've got for sale here. It's fun to browse though."

The woman straightened up and cleared her throat, and the nervous energy in her body was replaced with a look of calm professionalism that looked completely out of place on anyone wearing Crocs.

“Actually, I wanted to ask you if the woman who owns this shop is currently in,” she said.

“You’re looking for Eva?” Luz asked, using the name that appeared on all of Eda's fake IDs.

The woman looked confused.

“No, I'm looking for Eda,” she said, “Edalyn Clawthorne.”

Luz drew in a sharp breath through her nose and gave the stranger a closer inspection.

_Well, I guess that might explain why she looks like that_ , Luz thought.

_There’s no way an actual human could look that beautiful without magic - or think that’s how people are supposed to dress for that matter._

“I guess you’ve made a mix-up with the addresses,” Luz said in an apologetic tone, “My boss's name is Evalyn Hawthorne and she’s not in at the moment.”

The woman narrowed her brown eyes and glanced over Luz’s shoulder.

“Then who was it I heard back there that made you say that goofy catch-phrase earlier?” she asked.

“Must’ve been the wind I guess,” Luz said in a bland voice.

She reached up slowly under the counter and ran her hands along the waist-high shelf built into it until her fingers found the familiar grip of a baseball bat. Sweat started to bead on Luz’s forehead as she wondered if a bat would be enough to stop whatever horrible monster was actually hiding under the illusion of the beautiful woman staring suspiciously in her direction.

“Luz? What’s going on out there?” Eda called out from behind the curtain. “Haven’t you chased that customer out yet? It's almost lunch time and I'm starving.”

The aura of steely competence that had shone out from the woman’s face just moments ago completely collapsed and she turned wide eyes back at Luz.

“Your name is Luz?” she asked in a hushed voice.

“That’s what it says on my drivers license, yeah,” Luz said. “I mean… it would say that if I had ever gotten one, that is.”

The black curtain behind Luz’s shoulder was thrown back and Eda strode out to stand beside her. Luz noticed that the older witch had taken the time to cast a quick illusion over herself to hide her more inhuman features.

“What’s going on here - are you harassing my employee?” Eda demanded. “Because I’m the only one allowed to annoy her while she’s on the clock. It’s company policy.”

The definitely-not-human woman glanced back and forth between Luz’s and Eda’s faces. There was clearly some sort of war of emotions going on in her mind, but she managed to get the situation under control, focusing her attention on the older witch.

“Are you Edalyn Clawthorne?” she asked.

Eda stiffened at the sound of her real name being spoken by a stranger.

“I might be,” Eda answered. “Why do you want to know?”

“I have some questions that I need to ask you,” the woman said.

“Are you a cop?” Eda demanded, “You have to tell me if you are!”

“She wouldn’t, actually,” Luz said. “That’s just an urban legend.”

“Well she might not have known that!” Eda snapped at Luz.

“Maybe it would be better if we talked in private - there are some very _sensitive_ topics I need to ask you about,” the young woman said to Eda, and then tilted her head very obviously in Luz’s direction.

Eda crossed her arms.

“Anything you want to say to me you can say in front of Luz,” Eda said. “And I do mean _anything_.”

At that, Eda’s masking illusion dropped to reveal her pointed ears and golden eyes.

The young woman took a half step back and then turned to shoot Luz a surprised look at her complete lack of reaction to the sight of Eda’s true face.

Eda traced a spell circle in the air and Luz heard the sound of the shop's front door locking, and the heavy blackout curtains closing up over the windows.

“So, who are you and what was it that you wanted to talk to me about?” Eda asked in a sweet voice.

The shocked look on the young woman's face vanished. Her lips compressed into a thin line, and she traced a quick circle in the air to drop her own mask.

Luz felt the inside of her mouth go dry as she took in the sight of the woman’s amber colored eyes, delicately pointed ears and slightly-long canine teeth.

_Well, I guess I was wrong_ , she thought.

_Somehow she’s even better looking without the illusion._

“My name is Amity Blight,” she said, “I’m a Guardian and I’ve been sent to investigate an incident that you were allegedly involved in last night.”

Eda gave Amity a grin that flashed the full length of the gleaming yellow fang poking out from the corner of her lip.

“You and what army, sister?” Eda asked.

Quicker than Luz would have thought possible, the young witch traced a large circle in the air in front of her with both of her index fingers. The violet-colored energy of the circle flashed and the air within it rippled and shifted into a darkness so black that it looked like a hole torn into the fabric of reality. Luz felt her scalp prickle with fear as several pairs of lavender colored hands the size of baseball gloves emerged from the darkness to grasp the glowing edges of the circle, and four bulky creatures pulled themselves out to stand beside Amity.

“Ah,” Eda said, as the circle collapsed into nothing and left her facing off against five opponents instead of one, “That army.”

Luz had never seen anything like the creatures that Amity had just summoned: they were tall and vaguely human shaped, but formed from thick purple slime instead of flesh and bone, with crude skull-like faces and burning pinpricks of green light glowing in their hollow eye sockets.

“I would prefer it if we could have our conversation in a civilized way,” Amity said. “Believe me when I tell you that I didn’t come here looking for a fight today.”

Luz swallowed down the acid taste of fear in her throat and drew the baseball bat out from beneath the counter. She choked up her grip on the bat and gave the young witch her best defiant stare.

“Maybe you could put away your squad of slime zombies and we might be willing to believe you when you say that,” she said.

Amity glanced at the bat, clearly unimpressed.

“Is that supposed to be intimidating?” she asked. “Because it’s not working.”

Luz summoned an image into her mind and then reached up and tapped a fingertip against one of the glyphs drawn in permanent marker on the body of the bat. Emerald green flames blossomed along the length of the club, stopping short of the layer of scaly hide wrapped around the handle of the bat like grip-tape.

Luz gave Amity a fierce grin.

“How about now?” she asked.

The witch stared at Luz in shock.

“How did you do that?” she asked. “Humans can’t do magic!”

“This one can,” Luz said. “Want to see what else I can do?”

“Okay, not that this little showdown hasn’t been fun,” Eda interjected, “But I’ve been wracking my brain here and I can’t think of anything I did last night that you Guardian goons would want to hassle me about.”

Amity shot Eda a suspicious look.

“Really? Nothing at all comes to mind?” she said.

“Not unless it’s suddenly a violation of the witches code to drink way too much appleblood and watch true crime documentaries until you pass out, no,” Eda said.

Amity’s brow furrowed slightly.

“Were you with anyone at the time who could verify that was all you did yesterday evening?” she asked.

Eda nodded.

“Yeah, I had my roommate with me,” she said.

At that moment King scurried out from behind the curtains and dragged himself up onto the counter in a flurry of grunts and ‘weh’s.

“I sensed impending violence and came as fast as I could!” the demon exclaimed. “Did I miss any of the carnage?”

“King, what was I doing last night?” Eda asked.

“Getting wasted and watching some TV show about serial killers,” the demon said promptly. “Humans may be pretty useless at most things, but they sure can come up with some entertaining ways to murder each other.”

_Maybe it wasn't such a great idea to call on King as a character witness_ , Luz thought with a sinking feeling.

Amity frowned and then nodded slightly to herself. She traced a quick circle with her finger in the air and three of the hulking slime-beasts vanished into nothingness, though the one that still remained at her side looked like it was the largest of the group.

In the spirit of cooperation, Luz released the flame-spell from the bat. The wooden club steamed gently in the air, but the strengthening runes that Eda had helped Luz carve into it had done their job and protected it from being damaged by the magical fire.

“Unfortunately, I don’t think that will be enough to satisfy my commander,” Amity said. “Especially since testimony from familiars about their masters isn’t considered reliable evidence.”

Eda gave a snorting laugh at that and King stomped a clawed foot on the counter.

“I AM NOT HER FAMILIAR!” the demon squealed in rage.

“What crime was Eda supposed to have committed last night, anyway?” Luz asked.

The witch turned to Luz with a start, as if she had forgotten that she was there.

“Um... how much do you know about her… condition?” she asked delicately.

“You mean the fact that Eda’s cursed and sometimes turns into that Owl Lady monster that they sell t-shirts of in the souvenir shops downtown?” Luz asked.

Amity’s head swiveled back and forth between Luz and Eda, her mouth opening and closing like a surprised fish.

“By the Titan, how many of our secrets did you tell this human?” she asked.

Eda shrugged.

“Not as many as you’d think, but Luz is a sharp one,” Eda said with an affectionate grin. “She figures this stuff out pretty quickly on her own.”

“Maybe I wouldn’t have to if you spent more time actually teaching me stuff,” Luz muttered under her breath.

“Anyway, why is there all this talk about my curse?” Eda asked, pointedly ignoring that comment. “I’ve been dosing myself with elixir regularly and haven’t transformed in months. Plus, I sleep in a barricaded basement room nowadays so that even if I do transform, I wouldn't be able to get out and cause any trouble.”

Luz gripped her forearms tightly as she felt a crawling sensation in the scars tracing across them. She was grateful for the comforting feeling of the long sleeved shirt that hid her damaged flesh from sight. 

It always prickled strangely whenever she remembered that night.

Luz snapped herself back to the present when she realized that Amity was talking.

“We’ve got a whole group of humans back at the Guardian Hall that all claim to have seen ‘The Owl Lady’ in the forest right outside…,” she turned and gave Luz a speculative look before continuing, “Right outside of New Bonesborough.”

“What? I don’t live anywhere near that dump!” Eda objected.

If Amity was offended at having her home called a dump by someone who ran a shop that peddled actual garbage, Luz wasn’t able to detect it on her face as the witch pressed on.

“There’s also a number of reports from humans here in Cypress, where you _do_ live, that all claim to have seen a huge flying beast last night,” Amity added.

“Is that all you’ve got? That’s slim evidence to try and convict someone of such a serious charge,” Eda said.

“It was all the evidence the Council needed,” Amity said in a grim voice, “Because my commander reached out to them and got their permission to have you brought back to the Guardian Hall immediately. They feel that if you’ve lost control of your curse then it’s no longer safe to let you live out here among the humans.”

“That’s bullshit!” Luz objected.

Amity turned her amber stare in Luz’s direction, and her eyes softened.

“I agree, actually,” she said.

“You do?” Eda asked, with genuine surprise in her voice.

“I didn’t come here to drag you back with me - I came to get your side of the story,” Amity said, “And to try and find evidence to see what really happened. If you did actually transform and cause trouble like they said then you’ll be coming with me, but if you’re innocent I’d like to present the evidence to my commander to clear up the misunderstanding.”

“Well, how about that - a Guardian who actually uses her brain and doesn’t just follow orders like a golem,” Eda said with a cocked eyebrow. “Let me guess, you’re still new, right?”

Luz noticed the slight flush of anger that crept across Amity’s face at that remark.

“I can’t let you roam around free while I’m investigating the reports on the sightings here, obviously," Amity continued. "If you were actually guilty you might try and escape - so I’ll be leaving Gildersnake here to watch over you. It’s linked up to my mind, so don’t try and evade or destroy it because I’ll know right away.”

Luz shot a surprised look in Amity’s direction.

“Did you just say that your gross purple sludge-zombie is named Gildersnake?” she asked.

A fresh coating of pink bloomed across Amity’s cheeks, and Luz felt her heart skip a beat at the sight.

_God, she’s cute_ , Luz thought.

_And apparently she also knows enough about the Good Witch Azura series to have named one of her gross goopy henchmen after a fairly obscure villain from a spinoff novel…_

_How does that somehow make her seem even cuter?_

_No! Bad Luz! She’s trying to arrest your mentor - you can’t have the hots for her!_

“Yeah… I named all of my Abominations after characters from books. It makes it easier to keep track of them,” Amity said.

“Dweebus alert,” Eda muttered under her breath.

Luz turned to Amity with a determined look on her face.

“I’m going with you,” Luz said.

Both Eda and Amity shot Luz simultaneous looks of surprise.

“Out of the question,” Amity said. “This is official Guardian business. I mean, technically a human like you isn’t even supposed to know anything about this stuff, much less be allowed to interfere with an investigation.”

“Are you going to report me to your boss, then?” Luz asked.

She tried to sound defiant, but her gut was churning at the prospect. Eda had very few good things to say about the way that most witches tended to treat humans who found out about their existence - especially the Guardians.

Amity looked stricken by the question and she shook her head.

“No,” she said, “No, I’m not going to do that. My only assignment here was to bring in the perpetrator responsible for last night's sightings - they didn't say anything about dealing with some crazy magic-using human. Your secret is safe with me.”

Luz felt a dozen questions wanting to fly from her lips about the witch’s strange attitude toward her, but she stuffed them back down and changed tactics.

“Look, we both want to find out the truth here,” Luz said, “And if you’re going to be travelling all around the city talking to humans, maybe it would help to have an _actual_ human with you that would know the right questions to ask people. Stuff that might not have occurred to someone who isn’t as familiar with us.”

Amity crossed her arms.

“What makes you think I’m not familiar at dealing with humans?” she demanded.

“You’ve seen the way you’re dressed, right?” Luz asked. “I don’t think people are going to be taking you super seriously if you try to pull a good-cop/bad-cop routine in that getup.”

“I’m not any kind of cop, I’m a Guardian - there’s a difference,” Amity snipped. “And we were low on human clothes back at the Hall!”

“How about you let me come with you in exchange for borrowing some of my human clothes, then?” Luz asked, “I promise you’ll look a lot less ridiculous.”

“Eh, that’s debatable,” Eda chimed in from the side.

Amity frowned to herself, tapping the toe of her scuffed red Croc against the floor indecisively for a few seconds before she finally nodded in agreement.

“Fine,” she said, “You can come along then - both for your human expertise and a change of clothes.”

Luz shot the witch a smile.

“You won’t regret this!” she promised.

“Titan, I hope not,” Amity sighed.


	2. Chapter 2

If Amity Blight felt like being honest, she'd be the first person to admit that being a Guardian was generally a pretty boring job.

Her usual workday consisted of patrolling the borders of New Bonesborough to prevent random humans from stumbling upon the town's existence, but, since it was built deep in the heart of a forest and far away from the usual walking trails, that didn’t tend to happen very often. Occasionally she would be called on to perform other tasks, like capturing an intoxicated demon that had wandered outside the barrier or filling out paperwork that more senior Guardians didn't want to do themselves. Once, she had even been sent to give a lecture at the local school on the dangers of making illicit trips to the nearby human city of Cypress.

She always felt hypocritical about that last one since she used to do the same thing herself back when she was a young witchling, but they didn't need to know that.

Nothing about today had been remotely close to normal, though, what with the chaos at the Guardian Hall, the tense confrontation between her current commander and her ex-mentor which she'd been uncomfortably shoved in the middle of, and then the counselor’s unexpected plea for help.

All of those events had Amity feeling pretty on-edge as she made her way through the crowded concrete maze of the human city, trying her best not to stare too obviously at all of the unfamiliar sights surrounding her (and to ignore the stares sent her way by the humans she passed thanks to her ridiculous, Titan-cursed outfit). She welcomed those distractions, though, since her objective had been to go confront Edalyn Clawthorne, the most infamous rebel in the short but eventful history of New Bonesborough. Amity had confidence in her skills, but Edalyn was a witch who was not only an extremely powerful practitioner of magic but also one whose opposition to the very existence of the Guardians was widely known. Not to mention the fact that she was also suffering from a curse that caused her to occasionally transform into a terrifying nightmare creature that could probably shred Amity into bite sized pieces with minimal effort.

It was almost enough to make her wish that she was going off to deliver yet another dull lecture to a group of bored, sarcastic teens instead.

All of those pesky concerns about her imminent mortal peril had flown right out of Amity’s mind, though, the moment she had stepped into Eda Clawthorne's bizarre shop and laid eyes on the young human woman seated behind the counter, doodling odd circular designs into a notebook with a look of intense concentration on her face.

It had been the little things that caught Amity's attention. The warm brown color of her eyes, the round shape of her face, the familiar curve of her lips when she greeted Amity with a smile as she walked through the door of the shop... all those details had combined into a solid lump of emotions and memories that knocked the wind right out of Amity like a sucker punch straight to the gut.

She had tried to shake herself out of her sudden shock and ignore the absurd thoughts that had leapt into her mind at the sight of the woman's face. Amity obviously must have been mistaken since her initial impression was clearly impossible. A coincidence like the one she was imagining would have been so absurd that if she'd read about it in a book, she would have rolled her eyes and tossed the book aside right there and then.

But then of course Edalyn Clawthorne had suddenly appeared and confirmed that the young woman glaring at her with suspicion was, in fact, Luz Noceda.

The first (and only) human that Amity had ever really known.

Her friend.

Her first love.

Her greatest regret.

Luz, who, despite being human, somehow seemed to know enough magic now to be able to cast a fire spell and then use it to threaten Amity with a flaming piece of sports equipment.

The fact that Luz had shown not a single flicker of recognition at the sound of Amity’s name when she'd introduced herself, but had still stiffened with tension when she learned that Amity was a Guardian wasn’t surprising, but it still shattered Amity’s heart all over again anyway.

And now, within an hour of this dizzying one-sided secret reunion, Amity suddenly found herself sorting through a pile of clothes in the bathroom of Luz's run down apartment, in an attempt to try and find something to wear that would let her blend in among the humans better than the crime against fashion she was currently wearing.

A task that was proving more difficult than Amity had initially expected.

For one thing, there was no denying that the two women were built differently. The human was tall, with a thin, long-limbed build that would have been described as ‘willowy’ by someone inclined to commit poetry at people.

Amity, on the other hand, was not willowy.

She wasn’t  _ short,  _ of course. No, Amity was  _ compact _ . It was a good word that implied efficiency, strength, and stability, and had absolutely nothing to do with her unfortunate tendency to need a stepping stool to help her reach things on the tallest shelves in the equipment room of the Guardian Hall.

Differences in height aside, there was also the matter of taste. Specifically, that Luz didn’t have any.

Most of the human’s shirts, with their ridiculously long sleeves that hung well past Amity’s wrists, all had some kind of goofy design printed on them. Everywhere Amity looked she was confronted with screen printed cartoon otters, weird slogans referencing indecipherable bits of human culture, and even a few garments that bore stylized depictions of the younger Clawthorne sister’s cursed form which the humans living in Cypress sold to tourists who were curious about the local legends of the Owl Lady.

Amity finally settled on a t-shirt that looked like it was an old one which Luz had outgrown.It had a faded Good Witch Azura logo on it. The hem still hung down a little longer than she would have liked, but at least she could use her hands freely while wearing it. Plus, the chibi-Azura design was cute.

The pants weren’t as bad, though they were uncomfortably snug at the hips, and Amity had to roll up the cuffs to stop herself from tripping over the loose fabric puddled around her ankles.

And  _ of course _ there weren’t any suitable replacements for the goofy red clown shoes that she’d been saddled with back at the Guardian Hall. The only shoes that Luz owned were the battered pair of sneakers on her feet and the even more worn out pair that she had used beforehand but hadn’t thrown out yet.

Both pairs were several sizes too large.

“Are you almost done getting dressed in there?” Luz’s voice called through the thin wooden barrier of the bathroom door.

Amity examined herself in the mirror, still slightly disturbed by the effect that the hastily-reapplied masking illusion had on her features. Her new outfit wasn’t one that she would have picked out for herself in ideal circumstances, but she couldn’t deny that it was still a vast improvement over her previous human disguise.

She turned back toward the door and took a deep breath to steady herself.

_ Okay, Amity - you can do this _ , she told herself.

_ Yes, you’ve never led an investigation on your own before. Yes, you are going to be doing your first-ever investigation side-by-side with a human in violation of practically every rule that you are supposed to be enforcing. Yes, that same human is someone who was once one of the most important people in your life but now has no idea who you are and you have to keep it that way… _

_ But you can still do this! _

Amity threw the door open and swaggered out with as much confidence as her silent pep-talk was able to help her muster up.

“So, will I fit in better with the rest of you humans now?” Amity asked, spreading her arms wide and taking a turn-around to give Luz a better look at her new disguise.

The human hummed low in her throat and stroked a thoughtful knuckle across her lower lip.

“Well, you look a little bit like a kid wearing her big sister’s hand-me-downs, but that’s probably about the best we’ll manage with what I've got available,” Luz said at last.

Amity drew herself up to her full height, which was still almost a full head shorter than the smirking human, and crossed her arms.

“Are you quite finished with the jokes? May I remind you that we’ve still got that little matter of investigating last night’s incidents to get through, and time is precious,” she said.

The upturned quirk of Luz’s lips straightened out into a firm line, and she nodded.

“You’re right, of course - the sooner we can prove Eda is innocent the sooner you can get back to harassing other witches and giving humans like me brain damage,” she said in a cool voice.

Amity didn't visibly flinch at that unexpected barb, but it was a close thing.

It seemed she wasn't entirely able to hide the way it had stung her, though, because Luz's brown eyes softened and an embarrassed half-frown twisted her lips.

"Sorry," she muttered, "I shouldn't have said that... especially since you're actually trying to help us out here."

"It's fine," Amity said quickly.

The last thing she deserved was an apology from Luz.

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence that stretched on just a beat past excruciating.

"So... how exactly are we supposed to be doing this investigation, anyway?" Luz asked hesitantly. "Everything I know about this stuff comes from television shows, and I'm not sure how accurate they would be for trying to solve magic-crimes. Or non-magic ones either, for that matter."

Amity breathed a sigh of relief at the change in subject. This, at least, was a topic she could handle.

In theory anyway.

"Well, I was told that there's a witch living here in Cypress that would probably have more detailed information about the incidents that took place last night. The locations of sightings, the names of witnesses, if any physical evidence was left behind and found by humans - things like that," Amity replied.

“That seems like a logical place to start,” Luz said with a nod. “How do we get in contact with them?”

Amity drew in a breath and then paused.

“I...uh… I don’t know, actually,” she admitted sheepishly. “I just know that he works as a journalist for one of the human news agencies here in town. I wasn’t given any other information on him.”

A small frown pulled down at the corner of Luz’s mouth at that.

_ Way to go Blight, I’m sure that Luz is really impressed with your investigative skills now _ , Amity cursed internally.

Before Amity could brood on the matter further though, Luz snapped her fingers and then she pointed toward Amity with a triumphant look on her face.

“It’s got to be Gus,” Luz said.

“Who are you talking about?” Amity asked.

“The witch that you were looking for - it’s probably my friend Gus,” Luz said. “He’s less of a journalist and more like a glorified intern over at channel five news but he’s the only witch I know in town that fits your description. I’ve got his number on my phone if you want to call him.”

It was Amity’s turn to frown now. She wondered how many other witches living here among the humans and out from under the watchful eye of the Guardians also knew Luz and called her their friend.

Not that Amity was  _ jealous,  _ of course.

“You should be the one to do it,” she muttered. “I don’t actually own a human phone.”

“You probably wouldn’t have much use for one over where you live, yeah,” Luz said. “Should I ask him if he wants to meet us for lunch? I haven’t eaten in a while and it’s always easier to think clearly with a full stomach.”

Amity was about to point out that time was still of the essence, but her stomach chose that moment to remind her that she'd missed breakfast with an embarrassingly loud growl.

“Sure,” Amity said with as much dignity as she could manage. “Lunch sounds good to me.”

While Luz busied herself messing around with one of those small glass rectangles that humans used to communicate with one another, Amity glanced around the living room of her apartment while trying not to let her interest show too openly on her face.

Though Amity was far from an expert on human homes, she could tell that this building had seen better days. Perhaps even better decades. The linoleum underfoot was cracked in places, with bits of the tiles curled up at the edges, and the wallpaper had faded to the point where its floral pattern could barely be distinguished from random blobs of pastel colors smeared along the walls.

Luz seemed to have made an effort to make the place her own, though.

There were a great many unframed paintings hung up on the walls done on canvas panels: a few looked like abstract patterns of bold colors and sharp lines but the rest were landscapes showing the familiar forests which grew wild on the outskirts of the human city, painted in different seasons, times of day and viewpoints.

The sheer number of books in the room had grown beyond the ability of Luz’s small bookshelf to contain them all. A variety of fantasy novels (including some titles which Amity recognized), chemistry textbooks and even a few old looking books that claimed to be human-written guides to performing magic were scattered about the small coffee table in the center of the room and piled onto the arms of the couches and chairs in random stacks.

Amity was about to reach for one of the books of magic when Luz spoke up to get her attention and then let her know that she had arranged a meeting for them at a nearby diner.

Since neither of the pair had a vehicle they made the journey on foot. Amity was given to understand that for a human city Cypress was supposed to be on the small side, but it still dwarfed New Bonesborough by a substantial degree in both size and population, though thankfully the streets seemed mostly empty of crowds of humans at this time of day. The walk from Eda's shop to Luz's apartment just up the street had been a very short one, but the diner was a bit further away and Amity had wracked her brain for conversation topics to help fill the silence. Part of her mind was desperate to try and find out everything that Luz had been up to in the nine years since Amity had last seen her, but she silenced it and decided to try a different track instead.

"So, I've never met a human that could do magic before," Amity began.

"Neither have I," Luz said in a dry voice.

"Where did you learn how to do that fire spell you used earlier? From one of those magic books I saw at your place?" Amity asked.

Luz turned to Amity with a raised eyebrow.

"Were you snooping through my stuff?" she asked, though without any real heat in her voice.

"Sorry, it's a bad habit I picked up from my job," Amity said. "Anyway, it's not  _ really  _ snooping if you just leave a bunch of books scattered out in the open where anyone can see them."

"Fair enough," Luz conceded. "No, those books were pretty much all junk. Eda says that she'll occasionally find something in one of them that seems a little accurate, but most of it is either distorted to the point of uselessness or just flat out made up."

"How did you do it then?" Amity pressed. "I'd always been taught it couldn't be done- that humans don't have the right kind of heart for casting spells like we do. You don't have a bile sack, right?"

"We don't," Luz confirmed. "But when Eda was trying to teach me how to do magic the witch-way I discovered that there's more to casting spells than just waving your fingers through the air."

Amity bit back a sarcastic reply at Luz's obvious oversimplification of performing magic, which even many witches found difficult to master without years of dedicated practice. Still, her curiosity had been piqued and she waved her hands in an impatient ' _ go on _ ' gesture for Luz to continue her explanation.

The human dug into the pocket of her old green jacket and drew out her phone. Her fingers slid around the screen in a flurry of mystifying movements and then she showed Amity a picture of Eda tracing a glowing golden spell circle in the air with a bored look on her face.

At first, Amity sucked in a shocked breath because photographs like this were  _ exactly  _ the kind of evidence of the existence of witches that she was supposed to confiscate and destroy on sight as a Guardian, but then she looked closer and her eyes narrowed in confusion.

"Why are there funny marks inside of the spell circle?" she asked. "I've never seen anything like that before."

"I've been calling them glyphs," Luz told her with a smug smile. "I found out about them when I was filming Eda with my phone to study how she did magic. They only appeared in the videos for a fraction of a second whenever Eda cast a spell, but I found out that each type of spell has its own unique glyph and that if I drew them out on paper I could use them to do magic on my own, no bile sack required."

Amity's eyes widened in surprise as she considered the implications of Luz's discovery.

"That's... that's incredible!" she said in an excited voice.

At the sight of Amity's positive reaction, Luz's face lost the wary expression she'd worn ever since she had discovered that Amity was a Guardian, and her lips spread into a heartbreakingly familiar sunny grin.

"I know, right?" she gushed. "Eda and I have been doing research like crazy to try and learn more about this stuff! That's part of the reason why I'm digging through all those musty old books about magic - Eda thinks there might be a connection between the symbols that appear in the glyphs and the symbols that ancient humans used for things like trying to summon spirits or writing out alchemy formulas. The symbols might have become distorted over the years, but if we can find some genuine ones in there we may be able to re-discover types of magic that were lost to both witches and humans centuries ago! Or we might even be able to find ways to create our own glyphs, and invent entirely new types of magic!"

Amity felt a dizzying swirl of emotions inside her at that moment. Awe at the fact that there was a whole new style of magic which she had never heard about, a burning desire to learn more about how it all worked, and apprehension about what would happen if the other Guardians ever got wind of this discovery... many of them were already wary enough of humans as it was, but if they learned that humans were capable of performing magic as well there would be no telling how they might react.

Eclipsing all of that, though, was a warmth curling around her heart at the sight of Luz's excitement as she babbled on about her many experiments with glyph magic. Even through all of the confusion and guilt that accompanied seeing Luz again, there was still a part of Amity that loved to see that the animated and enthusiastic girl she had once known was still there lurking underneath her cool façade.

_ I'm glad that you finally made your dream come true _ , Amity thought to herself.

_ I just wish that I'd been the one who had been able to help you find your magic. _

_ Maybe things would have been different if I had. _

Amity shook her head at the thought. It was pointless to wonder about something like that now.

"Hey? Amity?" Luz called out as she waved a hand in front of Amity's eyes.

"Hmmm?" Amity said.

"We're here," Luz said, pointing at a small restaurant across the street which had a red-and-white striped awning shading its entrance.

_ Oh, right _ , Amity thought.

_ There's still that investigation to do - the whole reason I'm even here in the first place. _

_ Even if I wanted to spend my time reconnecting with Luz, that doesn’t change the fact that I still have a job to do. _

The inside of the diner was small, fairly clean and not especially busy but the air was heavy with appetizing smells that whet the edges of Amity's appetite to razor sharpness.

_ I wonder what sort of things they serve here? It's been years since I've tried any human food _ , Amity thought.

Luz gave Amity's shoulder a squeeze to get her attention and then nodded her head in the direction of a young dark skinned man seated in a corner booth who seemed to be engaged in playing with his phone. As they made their way closer to the booth and Amity got a better look at his face, she felt a nagging sense of familiarity in the back of her mind.

"Gus... You're Augustus Porter, right?" she asked, when they drew level with the booth. "You went to Hex-... I mean, we went to school together."

The young man looked up in surprise and then squinted at Amity's face.

"Amity Blight?" he said in a confused voice. "When did you move to Cypress? I thought you'd be the type to never leave home."

"I haven't moved here," Amity said with equal confusion, and then turned to Luz. "What did you tell him?"

"Yeah, what's going on here Luz?" Augustus asked Luz.

Luz slid into the booth across from Augustus and waved Amity in to sit down beside her. After a moment's hesitation, Amity slid into the seat but tried to keep a bit of distance so that she wouldn't be squeezed up against her too closely.

"You called in to the Guardians about a bunch of humans seeing a flying monster last night, right Gus?" Luz said in a quiet voice.

Augustus's ( _ Gus,  _ Amity mentally corrected herself) eyes grew wide.

"Yeah, I thought maybe a wild demon had escaped from the forest and wanted to help them find it before it could hurt any humans here in town," Gus said. "How did you know about that, though?"

Amity cleared her throat.

"I'm a Guardian who was sent here after your reports came in. My Commander believes that the creature you heard about was actually Edalyn Clawthorne in her cursed form, and ordered me to bring her in," Amity said.

"You're a Guardian?" Gus hissed in confusion. He turned to look back and forth between Amity and Luz. " _ And _ you think that monster everyone saw last night was Eda? Why is Luz here helping you, then? Are you threatening her? How do you even know about her? Is this a sting? Am I being stung right now?"

"Gus, buddy - calm down," Luz said, making soothing motions with her hands. "We're here because Eda says that she is innocent, and I'm helping Amity with her investigation to try and clear her name. Amity told me that you might know where we could start looking for clues about the sightings here in town, since you were the one that called in with the information."

Gus sat visibly straighter in his seat at that and puffed out his thin chest just a little.

"Well, my career in journalism does give me access to plenty of useful information and valuable contacts here in the human world," he said with obvious pride.

"Don't the reporters mostly just send you out to do coffee runs for them?" Luz asked in a teasing voice.

Gus's face tightened into an annoyed frown, that might have more accurately been called a pout, and he stuck out a closed fist toward Luz with only his ring finger raised up for some inexplicable reason.

"Still not the right finger, pal," Luz said in a bland voice.

Gus clicked his tongue in frustration.

"Shoot, I'm never going to get that one right," he muttered.

Luz held up her own closed fist and then tapped at the knuckle between her casting finger and ring finger.

" _ That's  _ the one you want to use to properly flip someone off - although you should probably be careful with using it around strangers. We humans can get kind of touchy about our insulting gestures," Luz said.

Gus nodded to himself.

"Got it, I should only use it around friends and family then," he said.

Amity glanced back and forth between the two friends and gave up trying to figure out what in the Titan's name they were talking about.

"Anyway," she interrupted pointedly, "If you do have any leads that would be able to give us more information for this investigation, that would be a huge help."

"I already told the other Guardians everything I found out last night," Gus said, "But I did just hear something before I came over to meet up for lunch that you guys might be interested in. One of the reporters I work with has a friend in the police department. He said that his friend claimed that some of his fellow cops actually saw the monster last night wandering through the streets in the rain. They shot it when it tried to attack them, and then it flew off after it was hit a few times. Their captain didn't let them file a report on it, though, because they thought that it would sound too ridiculous and make the police department look like a laughingstock. We can't even use it as a news story now, since there's no official paper trail to verify it and they could say we were just making it all up."

"Did they say where this epic monster battle apparently took place?" Luz asked Gus.

"I think they said it was lurking in one of the alleys near the old Tanager Street shopping district when it attacked them," Gus said. "Maybe it left behind some footprints there... or clawprints or whatever it is that you guys think would be a good clue for catching a mystery monster, anyway."

Before Amity could start coming up with a plan for using this new information, the waiter arrived at the table to take their orders for lunch. Thankfully, Gus generously offered to cover the bill with his boss’s "credit card" and Amity didn’t have to worry about her lack of human money. Amity scanned the menu, got totally lost at all the strange names and bizarre-sounding foods listed on it and then picked out an item at random for herself.

The food turned out to be quite delicious, although Amity found it a little disturbing how it just  _ lay there _ and didn’t move or make any noises at all as she ate it. Luz and Gus engaged in bantering small talk during the meal, exchanging news about their mutual friends. Many of the names that came up in that conversation were ones which Amity recognized from her years studying magic at school in New Bonesborough, and she wondered just how many of her former classmates had decided to move out here to Cypress. At one point Luz asked Gus if he knew any embarrassing stories about Amity from when they were in school together, but he just gave her a small smile and said that they had “run in different circles” and hadn’t interacted much.

Luz looked disappointed at hearing that, although Amity couldn’t tell if it was because Luz was interested in learning more about Amity as a person, or just that she was sad she couldn’t hear about some hilarious screw-up made by one of the Guardians she clearly detested.

Toward the end of the meal Luz excused herself from the table, leaving Amity and Gus alone for the first time.

“So, you’re really a Guardian now?” Gus asked after a very brief pause.

Amity nodded.

“I only started out a little less than a year ago, but yeah,” she said.

Gus narrowed his eyes and glanced back toward the bathroom which Luz had stepped into moments ago.

“Is Luz going to be okay?” he asked her in an intense whisper.

“What do you mean?” Amity asked, feeling a nervous prickle at the back of her neck.

“You know  _ exactly  _ what I mean,” Gus insisted with a frown on his face. “The Guardians' whole thing is keeping people like us a secret from humans, and even if Luz is a weird human she’s still a human. Is this going to be a problem? Are you guys going to try to  _ do  _ anything to her?”

Amity quickly shook her head.

“No,” she said. “I already promised Luz that I’m not telling the other Guardians anything about her - and seeing you two talking together here like normal friends just made me more sure that it’s the right decision. Those secrecy rules exist to protect our community from danger, but Luz doesn’t look like a threat to witch-kind to me.”

The frown on Gus’s face softened and he nodded once.

“Good,” he said. “Because she's not. If anything, she's an ally to us all - she's helped a lot of us out with understanding some of the more confusing stuff here. A lot of the witches here in Cypress owe Luz for her help, and they’d be very upset if anything bad happened to her. Myself included.”

“Hey, what are you guys whispering about so dramatically over here?” Luz called out as she neared the table.

“Just reminiscing with Amity about the big dance at our old school,” Gus said as his frown vanished and a blindingly bright smile suddenly appeared on his face. "Apparently, back in the demon realm the tradition was that one student had to fight some kind of nightmare monster every year, but here they just dress up one of the teachers in a big goofy suit and it's more of a game."

"Sounds a lot less dangerous that way," Luz said.

"Eh, depends on which teacher got assigned to play the role of Grom that year," Gus said with a shrug.

Amity was left to wonder if the other witch’s last statement to her had been a simple statement of fact or a very thinly veiled threat.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Tanager Street, according to the map on Luz’s phone, was a significant distance from the diner which they had just left. But she didn't mind the walk, and Amity didn't seem to either. Luz was used to travelling this way, since Cypress was a fairly small town, and she guessed that Amity was used to it as well. Eda had told her that witches didn't use vehicles that much, aside from the lucky ones that had a flying staff of their own.

Amity had a distracted look on her face and seemed to be mulling over something in her mind, so Luz decided to be the one to break the silence this time.

She had been wary of Amity at first, but Guardian or not it was hard to feel intimidated by someone who had suddenly asked in the middle of her meal what a chicken was and why its fingers had no bones.

“So, I’m guessing that if you’ve got a big goopy monster named Gildersnake then you probably liked the Good Witch Azura books, right?” Luz asked.

Amity seemed pleasantly surprised to hear the friendly tone in Luz’s question.

“They were my favorites when I was a kid, yeah,” Amity said with a nod.

Luz beamed out a sunny grin. It was nice to meet a fellow fan - the series didn't get nearly enough appreciation in her opinion.

“Mine too,” she said. “I used to bug my mami to take me to the bookstore whenever a new book in the series was coming out and then I’d stay up all night reading it cover to cover.”

Her heart warmed at the memory, and she saw that Amity was giving her a small smile. Luz felt her ears start to burn and wondered if she was oversharing.

“I read the first one when someone left it on the shelves of the school library by accident,” Amity said. “I’d never read a book quite like it before and I wanted to read more… but then I found out the only place to get the other volumes was here, outside of town.”

“What did you do?” Luz asked, intrigued by this tantalizing glimpse of the beautiful stranger's backstory.

“I wasn’t sure what to do, since it’s forbidden for witchlings to leave the barrier without adult supervision… and my parents were huge snobs that despised anything to do with humans, so they'd never have taken me here to look for human books,” Amity said. “Eventually though, I decided that I just  _ had  _ to read the rest of the series, so I asked my older siblings to teach me the tricks they used to sneak outside of the barrier.”

“Wow, I thought I was a major Azura fan but you took it to another level there,” Luz said. “What happened next?”

Amity paused. She was silent for a few moments, but then took a deep breath and continued with her story.

“Well, I didn’t know the first thing about casting a good illusion at that age so my only disguise was an itchy wool hat to hide my ears,” Amity said. “I ended up wandering into Cypress lost, confused and feeling so overwhelmed by all the sounds and the smells and just the sheer number of  _ humans  _ everywhere. All my life, I’d been warned about how important it was to avoid humans at any cost and now I was surrounded by them. I was terrified… but still determined to get my hands on those books.”

“And then?” Luz pressed.

Amity's face softened.

“And then a human girl around my age ran up to me because she had seen my copy of the first Azura book in my hands and started talking to me about the books,” Amity said. “At first, I was scared and tried to get rid of her… I was  _ so  _ rude that I have no idea how she could stand it… but she just kept wanting to talk to me. When I finally broke down and told her I had only read the first one and that I was trying to find the other books in the series, she offered to lend me her own copies of them.”

“Wow, she sounds like kind of a lot to deal with,” Luz commented.

“She was,” Amity answered with a laugh. “But she was also sweet and fun to talk to. I ended up making so many trips back and forth through the barrier that summer to give her back the book I’d just finished and pick up the next one in the series. Once I’d finished all of them, though, I kept going back to talk about them with her… and then just to spend time with her.”

Luz felt the warmth in Amity's voice touch off something inside of her, and her eyes grew hot.

“That’s such a beautiful story,” Luz said with a sniffle. “Are you still friends?”

Amity shook her head.

“No,” she said. “My friend… she got hurt because of me. Badly. There was nothing I could do to help, and I knew I’d never be able to make it up to her, so I decided it was better if we never met again. This is actually the first time I’ve been this far outside of the barrier since that last trip I took to see her.”

There was a heavy silence that followed the end of Amity’s story. Luz wanted to say something to help take away some of the pain she heard in the witch's voice, but she had no idea if any words she had would ever be enough.

“I’m sorry,” Luz said.

Amity flinched.

“Why would you say that?” she asked.

“I just meant that I’m sorry that something like that happened to you and your friend,” Luz said.

“Me too,” Amity said.

Fortunately, the pair arrived at the area which Gus had directed them to before the grim silence that had followed the end of Amity's story could get any more awkward.

The area where the police officers had apparently been attacked the night before was in one of the more run down parts of town. Most of the storefronts along this side of Tanager Street were either boarded up, destroyed or had extremely optimistic "This Space For Rent” signs hanging in their windows with the faded phone numbers of local real estate agencies printed below. The air was damp from last night's heavy rain and the sounds of the city seemed distant and muffled by the row of mostly-empty buildings.

Luz wasn't quite sure where to start with the whole investigation business, but thankfully Amity had snapped out of her funk and suggested that she and Luz split up and search the different alleyways between the buildings for anything out of the ordinary. Luz nodded in agreement. Privately, she worried about the possibility of finding the creature waiting for her, lurking behind a dumpster somewhere, but the reassuring weight of the bag slung across her shoulder helped to put her mind at ease.

_ Better have my things ready just in case, though _ , Luz thought.

She reached into the canvas messenger bag she carried with her everywhere and drew out an ordinary looking three-ring binder, which had a number of large tabs in distinct colors separating the sections of differently colored papers. She held it loosely in one hand, ready to open it up to tear out a page if necessary with the other hand - just in case she found herself in a situation where a glyph might come in handy. Luz wished that she had been able to bring her bat along with her as well, but it was cumbersome to lug it around everywhere and tended to draw too much attention to her out in public.

She searched the alleyway which Amity had directed her towards for some time without any luck and then moved over to the next one - a stretch of crumbling brick and cracked asphalt that ran between a former pawn shop and a Chinese Restaurant that had burned down several years ago and never been rebuilt. She had thought that this alley might also prove to be a dead end, until something on the wall near the middle of the alleyway caught her eye.

Luz moved in closer and found a stretch of wall where there were several parallel lines gouged deep into the surface of the bricks, arranged in groups of three, as well as a thick splattering of tarry, greenish-black fluid on the wall and pooled on the floor below the marks. There was a smell that was vaguely reminiscent of rotten eggs in the air.

_ I'm no ace detective, but I think this might count as a clue _ , Luz thought. _ Raccoons probably couldn't do something like this. _

"Amity - I think you might want to come check this out," Luz called.

The witch jogged over from the alley she had been investigating and then stopped to stare at the torn up bricks. Amity moved in closer and put her hand, fingers spread wide, up against one of the sets of lines slashed into the brick. The width of the marks was far larger than the distance between Amity's thumb and pinky finger.

“Claw marks,” Amity said. “And whatever made them was very big.”

“What about that goop over there - what do you think it could be?” Luz asked.

“It’s blood,” a high pitched voice called out from the mouth of the alley. “And it’s definitely not Eda’s, either.”

Luz and Amity turned in surprise, and Luz was already reaching down to tear out a blue colored ice-glyph page from her binder when she saw the source of the voice.

A small black dog with white markings on its head and yellow-pink eyes stared back at her from the mouth of the alley.

Luz’s eyes widened in surprise.

“King? What are you doing here?” she asked.

The demon jerked its shoulders in an awkward canine-approximation of a shrug.

“It was getting boring waiting back at the shop and I thought following you two while you were out playing detective would be a more fun way to spend my afternoon,” he said.

No matter how many times Luz saw King in his dog form, she could never get over how  _ creepy  _ it felt that he could talk without moving his mouth. The words just appeared in the air somehow, emanating from some random point around his head.

“How did you get past my abomination?” Amity demanded. “I ordered it to prevent anyone from leaving the building.”

The unholy being currently disguised as a little black terrier gave the Guardian what passed for an insolent look among dogs.

“Relax, your big slimy brute is just fine - the last time I saw it Eda was trying to teach it how to play Hexes Hold’Em with her,” the tiny demon answered. “But you actually only ordered it to keep Eda from leaving, since _she_ was your suspect. You didn’t say anything about me.”

Amity looked annoyed, but didn’t say anything in response to the demon's snippy answer.

“Are you sure it’s just boredom that made you follow us? I thought you hated taking that form,” Luz said.

The dog growled low in its throat while King’s voice spoke at the exact same time.

“I don’t care what anyone says, having your skull on the inside is gross and weird!” the demon said. “But you're right... I couldn’t just let you get all the credit for saving Eda. I wanted to share in the glory - and to be able to hold it over her forever, of course.”

“Of course,” Luz said with a knowing half smile.

As much as the demon blustered and grumbled, Luz knew that he really did care strongly for Eda and herself. It was cute to see his softer side at times like this.

“What was it that you said earlier about this being blood?” Amity asked as she pointed at the stains that Luz had found.

King sauntered over to the splatter of greenish-black fluid and sniffed again.

“Yep, that’s definitely demon blood. The scent of sulfur is a dead giveaway,” he said. “Eda’s smell changes a lot when she's in her transformed state, but she’s still mostly just a witch even in that form. She doesn’t smell anything like an actual demon.”

Luz felt a surge of hope in her chest at the little demon's confident declaration. She had been feeling stressed out ever since Amity burst into the shop that morning and declared that the Guardians were after Eda. The fact that they now had solid proof that whatever had been seen that night wasn’t actually Eda was extremely welcome news.

“Well, do you think that this evidence will be enough to get the other Guardians to back off from harassing Eda now?” Luz asked Amity.

The witch frowned as she considered the question. Luz found herself smiling slightly at the cute way Amity’s nose scrunched up when she was deep in thought, and then had to drag herself back to her senses for what felt like the hundredth time today.

“I think it might,” she said at last, “But I’d probably have to take a sample back with me. No offense to your nose, demon, but my Commander would want more than just your word for it since you could be lying in Eda's favor. If we get the demon blood analyzed by our own team of alchemists, though, then we can use it to argue strongly in favor of Eda’s innocence.”

“That’s great!” Luz said.

Amity answered Luz’s smile with one of her own.

“I’ll call in to the Hall right now so that we can get things cleared up as soon as possible,” Amity said. “Do you mind waiting outside the alley? I don’t want my Commander to catch sight of you by accident.”

Luz nodded her agreement and walked out to the mouth of the alley. King followed along after her and plopped down at her feet, scratching furiously at the top of his head with one of his back paws.

“Ugh,” the demon groaned. “I hate having all of this disgusting fur and  _ skin _ on my face. Give me some nice clean bone any day.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll be home again soon and you can go back to looking like your normal handsome self,” Luz assured him.

King gave a grunt of agreement.

“So, have you been having fun hanging out with your new  _ friend  _ today?” King asked with a leer in his voice.

Luz gave a nervous laugh at that.

“Who, Amity?” she asked. “I’m not sure that ‘friend’ is a great description of our relationship. We're like... reluctant allies.”

The demon-dog rolled his unnervingly un-doglike eyes at her.

“Of course, I’m sure that you secretly hate her guts,” King said. “That’s why she’s currently wearing your clothes, and you two have been having lunch together and then walking for miles all around town talking about magic, and your favorite books and sharing sad childhood stories.”

"Just how long have you been following us, anyway?" Luz asked, eyes narrowed.

"A while," King admitted without any shame in his voice. "It's fun to sneak up on people unnoticed. Reminds me of stalking prey."

"The last prey I saw you stalk was a bag of chips," Luz said.

"I still have the keen senses of the apex predator that I am," King snipped. "Keen enough to spot you making goo-goo eyes at Ms. Guardian over there."

Luz felt her face flush and she shot a sharp glare downward in King’s direction.

“Amity and I have been conducting a serious investigation to keep Eda from being sent to some kind of horrible witch-prison - this isn’t a meet-cute!” Luz objected.

“What’s a meet-cute? Is that a human friendship thing?” King asked.

Too late, Luz realized the unconscious slip she had made.

“Not… exactly,” she said evasively.

_ Okay, so yes - I DO think Amity is attractive, let’s just get that out of the way right now and stop pretending otherwise _ , Luz told herself.

_ And yes, I did kind of think that from the way King was talking about it, it almost sounded like we were on a date. _

_ But that is  _ definitely _ not what is happening here. _

Luz couldn’t deny that she felt oddly happy in Amity’s company, though. It was strange, but she had found the witch surprisingly easy to talk to for someone she had threatened with a flaming baseball bat only a few hours before.

_ Maybe if we had met under different circumstances we really could have been friends _ , Luz thought.

_ Or maybe even more than that if I was  _ really  _ lucky. _

_ But I’m sure that Amity probably just wants to wrap this case up and get back home to her secret witch-village as soon as possible. After that story she told me about her old friend, I wouldn’t be surprised if she wanted to go right back to avoiding being around humans like me as much as possible. _

Before Luz could brood much more on the subject, Amity emerged from the alley with an irritated frown on her face.

"How did the call with your boss go?" Luz asked.

"Not great," Amity said in a flat voice. "As soon as Commander Kikimora answered the call she was demanding to know why I hadn't already captured your boss and brought her back in yet. When I pointed out that she had an alibi and I had also just found some contradictory evidence here in town, she helpfully reminded me that I am only a patrol Guardian, not an Inquisitor, and I don't have the authority to conduct an investigation on my own. She repeated her order to go back to the shop, arrest Eda and then bring her back to the Hall immediately."

A leaden feeling settled in Luz's gut as all of her earlier hopes of the situation being easily resolved vanished in an instant.

"What did you say after she told you that?" Luz asked.

"I... uh... I faked a bad connection and then hung up on her," Amity said in a shaky voice. "Then I shut my scroll off."

Luz's eyebrows shot up in surprise.

"Aren’t you going to get in trouble for doing that?" she asked.

"Without a doubt," Amity grimaced. "But this new evidence we found is too important to ignore. Especially when there's still a potentially dangerous demon lurking out here that might end up hurting some innocent humans while Eda is getting locked up in its place."

Luz felt an overwhelming surge of gratitude for Amity at that moment, and no sooner had the witch finished speaking than Luz threw her arms around the shorter girl and wrapped her up into a tight hug.

"Thank you so much Amity - you're the best!" Luz exclaimed.

Amity made an incoherent noise in response that was somewhere between a squeak and a mumble.

After a few moments of intense hugging, Luz's brain caught up with what her body had been doing in its absence and she released her grip on Amity and stepped back, albeit with some regret at the loss of contact.

"So, what do you think our next move should be?" Luz asked with an embarrassed cough.

Amity's face flushed a particularly vivid shade of red and her eyes were locked in a thousand-yard-stare for a few moments before she blinked several times and then cleared her throat to answer.

"Well, if we could find the demon that was here last night and bring it back to New Bonesborough, then I'm sure that the Commander would have to listen to reason," she said.

Luz had her doubts about that, judging by what Amity had said about her Commander, but it was still the best plan they had right now.

"Okay then," Luz said. "Do you know some kind of spell that could help us track the demon down? I mostly just have basic elemental glyphs since Eda only shows me new spells when I've proved to her that I've mastered the last one."

A disgusted snort exploded out from somewhere in the vicinity of Luz's ankles, and she looked down to see that King was giving her a haughty glare.

"Who needs magic for something that simple?" the demon said in an arrogant tone. "I could follow this trail in my sleep. Especially since the demon we're going to be following has been wounded."

"Well then, lead the way, your majesty," Luz said with a grin.

The demon, according to King's nose, had taken an extremely circuitous flight path through the city after its encounter on Tanager Street. The small demon led Luz and Amity through back alleys, across busy roads and at one point doubled back around on their route and then took a completely different path than the one they'd been following before.

"Are you sure he knows what he's doing?" Amity whispered to Luz as they waited at a crosswalk while King was sniffing out the different branching streets to find the trail.

"Probably," Luz replied. "Anyway it's not like either of us have a better idea."

"Bark bark," King said in an annoyed voice, one paw raised up in a hunting dog stance as he indicated the street they should follow next.

"Did that dog just say the word 'bark'?" asked the old man standing beside them at the crosswalk light.

"I didn't hear anything like that," Luz said.

"Must have been your imagination," Amity added.

The old man grunted.

"Damned faulty hearing aids," he muttered.

After another mile of walking, King declared that he was tired and demanded that someone carry him the rest of the way. Luz sighed and stuffed the demon in her messenger bag, annoyed at the extra weight tugging down on her shoulder.

Fortunately, the path became much more straightforward soon after that point and King confidently declared that they were getting very close to the source of the demon scent that he'd been tracking. The area of town they were in now had once been an industrial district, though the various factories and warehouses had mostly all closed down after hard times had fallen on Cypress.

The building that they finally stopped outside of was so dilapidated that Luz couldn't tell what had once been manufactured there. From the looks of the rust stains streaking down the cinder block walls from the sheet metal roof, the only thing that was still made here was tetanus.

"The demon we're looking for has to be in there - I'd stake my throne on it," King said.

Luz regarded the building with a sense of growing unease. Her investigations with Amity had taken up the better part of the day and the skies were beginning to darken. King had told her, in one of his many impromptu lectures to her on the nature and habits of his fellow demons, that most of his kind tended to be nocturnal.

_ Which just means that we shouldn’t hesitate _ , Luz told herself.

_ The longer we wait around the less likely the demon is to be asleep, and I’d rather not walk in on it when it’s just woken up and is looking for breakfast. _

“Well, there’s no point in waiting around out here,” Luz said. “We should get going.”

Amity shook her head.

“It’s too risky - I should go in on my own,” Amity said.

Luz bristled at that.

“What, you don’t think I can look out for myself?” Luz demanded. “Because I have a whole binder full of spells that says otherwise.”

Amity shook her head.

“You were coming along to help me investigate, not risk your life by cornering a wounded demon in its lair,” Amity argued. “I’m a Guardian - it is literally my job to protect people from dangers exactly like this.”

“Well, I’m a human so I’m outside of whatever magic-town jurisdiction you guys think you have,” Luz said. “We’ve come this far together, so we’ll see it through to the end together. I want to make sure that you’re safe too, you know?”

Luz was surprised to see the change in Amity’s expression at that. Apparently something she said had really hit home, because the witch nodded once.

“Fine, but if I say run - you run,” Amity said in a stern voice.

Luz sketched a sloppy salute.

“Yes, ma’am,” she drawled.

“Please don’t make me regret this,” Amity muttered under her breath as she pulled open the battered graffiti stained door leading into the building. The door gave way with an ear splitting creak.

* * *

The inside of the building was a maze of heavy shadows and mysterious looming shapes that had once been pieces of vital factory equipment, but had been corroded by time and the elements into oddly shaped slabs of rust. The only illumination came from weak shafts of sunlight which streamed in from the few clear spots on the high-set dust caked windows.

Amity was about to trace out a light spell when Luz stopped her with a quick wave of her hand.

“Allow me,” the human said as she reached into her bag, pushed past the lazy demon resting inside it, and then drew out that chunky book-like object she’d been carrying around earlier.

Curious to see more of Luz’s unique human magic in action, Amity made a ‘go on’ gesture.

Luz smiled, then tore out a yellow page which had a large circle drawn on it in thick lines of dark ink, with one of those glyphs that Luz had been talking about earlier drawn inside of it. The human lay her palm flat against the glyph, and the paper curled up inside of itself before Amity’s eyes and then transformed into an orb of soft yellow light the size of a blood apple which floated up over their heads and banished the shadows around them.

“That really is pretty amazing,” Amity said as she watched the light spell drift along through the air. “I had no idea that magic could be done this way. I don’t think anyone in New Bonesborough does.”

Luz gave her a toothy grin, with such open delight at Amity’s reaction sparkling in her eyes that it made the witch’s heart skip a beat.

“Eda thinks that all magic might have started out this way, a long time ago,” Luz said. “She said there weren’t many books that survived the disaster that brought her parents and the other witches and demons to this world, but some of the ones that she had read were histories that claimed that casting spells the way modern witches do used to be a very rare talent.”

“Yes, it’s all very fascinating,” King drawled from his messenger-bag hammock. “But there’s still the matter of the demon lurking in here that we are trying to find, in case you’ve forgotten. I know that witches and humans have terrible senses, but you two have to be smelling that too, right?”

Amity frowned at the little creature's rude interruption, but she had to admit he had a point. She sniffed at the air and then grimaced. Underneath the heavy smells of dust, rust and mildew there was the telltale scent of sulfur and a rank odor like a mix of old meat and volatile chemicals.

“King’s right,” Amity said. “We need to be quiet and careful.”

Luz flipped through her binder and tore out a few different colored pages, folding them up and stuffing them into her jacket pocket. 

“Thought I’d get a few emergency spells ready just in case,” she explained to Amity.

Amity glanced down at King, who was looking around the dim cavernous room with his nose in the air.

“Do you think you can lead us to the demon?” Amity asked him.

“Yes - it should be easy in a confined space like this,” King said. “It smells like it’s straight ahead, past those double doors.”

Amity looked in the direction that King had indicated and saw the pair of metal doors covered in flaking green paint.

She swallowed down the lump of fear that had lodged itself in her throat and forced herself to move forward, making sure that Luz was safely behind her. Even if her weird glyph paper-magic seemed to be functional, Amity wasn’t sure how useful it would be in a dangerous situation and she wasn’t prepared to risk Luz’s safety to test that out.

The closer Amity drew to the door the heavier the sharp, acrid stench in the air grew. A snuffling noise shattered the brooding silence of the factory without warning, causing both Amity and Luz to jerk with surprise (and in Luz’s case to hiss out a few furious words in a language that Amity didn’t understand). After a tense moment the group realized that nothing was going to swoop in and attack them from behind, and Amity saw that the noise had come from behind the door right in front of her.

_ Well, here goes nothing _ , Amity thought.

She reached out a hand and pushed the door open.

A dim blue light shone out from the crack between the doors as it swung open, and Amity found herself staring at a bizarre sight.

A tall dome of criss-crossing bars of glowing blue barrier magic had been cast in the center of the large room like a cage, and pacing furiously back and forth within that cage was the Owl Lady.

Amity, like practically all of the residents of New Bonesborough, had heard of the infamous incident when Edalyn Clawthorne had first transformed into the creature decades ago and had run wild through the forests for weeks before she was able to be treated with a curse-reversing elixir. She had been spotted by so many humans at that point, not to mention filmed and photographed and sketched by people who went on to write wildly inaccurate cryptozoology books about her, that the fledgling Guardian organization of that time had had no hope whatsoever of being able to cover it all up.  _ Everyone  _ knew what the Owl Lady looked like, and there was no mistaking the hideous bird-witch hybrid pacing around in the cage for anything else.

“That’s impossible,” Luz said in a horrified whisper.

“It  _ is  _ impossible,” King agreed. “Because that is the demon we’ve been following, not Eda.”

Amity closed her eyes and felt the tug of her abomination Gildersnake’s presence in the back of her mind. It was still active and functional, and the dull feedback its rudimentary senses were sending to Amity indicated that the prisoner it had been assigned to guard had made no aggressive moves, nor had she attempted to go beyond the boundaries that it had been told to protect.

King was right.

Amity moved in closer to the cage of energy, but made sure to keep a healthy distance from the edge to avoid being disemboweled by a random swipe of a talon if the creature became aggressive. She was far from an expert on illusion magic, that was more her siblings’ specialty, but she knew enough of the basics to be able to remove one if necessary.

She traced a spell circle in the air and aimed it toward the Owl Lady.

“Reveal,” Amity muttered under her breath as she pushed the energy of the circle toward the beast.

Nothing happened at first, but then the outline of the creature's form began to grow fuzzy and dim as though it were a painted illustration that had been dipped in water and had started to smear. As the colors and shapes of its false form sloughed off the true nature of the creature was revealed.

Amity had never seen a demon like this before. It stood as large as the false Owl Lady illusion had, but its bulky body was covered in a warty, teal-colored hide rather than feathers, and its wings were ragged and batlike. It had six legs that each ended in a large three-clawed paw, and a head like a boar with six off-white eyes arranged in a single long row across its face.

Once Amity had gotten used to the sight of the demon, she realized that it was moving oddly. There were a number of small circular wounds in its flank that were crusted with dried streaks of greenish-black blood, causing it to limp with the legs along that side of its body.

“A batswine,” King said with surprise. “There aren’t even supposed to be any of this type of demon in this realm. They’re vicious and wild creatures, and even the smartest ones are barely sentient. None of them would have been allowed to go through the evacuation portals when the Titan was awakening.”

“What’s that glowing mark on its back?” Luz asked as she pointed at a space between the batswine’s wings. “It almost looks like a glyph.”

A deep rumbling sound split the air and Amity was surprised to discover that the sound was coming from King.

“It must be a summoning sigil,” the demon said in a furious voice. “This demon was called up from its realm and then whoever summoned it branded it with that mark to force it to obey their orders.”

Amity felt a shudder of revulsion run through her body. Demons were free-willed beings, and ones that guardians were supposed to protect just as much as their fellow witches. The fact that someone had not only pulled a wild demon from the forbidden reaches of the demon realm but had then used magic to enslave it and force it to serve them was utterly repugnant.

“Whoever did this needs to pay,” Amity said quietly.

“Definitely,” Luz agreed in a grim voice. “Slavery in any form is disgusting.”

“Well, as long as the barrier is up I guess we don’t need to worry about being attacked by it,” Amity said. “I’m going to cast a beacon spell to let the other Guardians know that they need to get here right away. Eda’s obviously been framed by whoever called up this demon, and we need to find out who they are before they can escape.”

The beacon spell was an easy one to cast, and one which all Guardians were taught. Hopefully it would alert any of her nearby colleagues who had assignments in Cypress that they needed to get to this area as soon as possible.

“Can we do anything to help with its injury?” Luz asked as she eyed the limping demon with sympathy in her eyes. “Or at least set it free from that awful spell?”

“No,” King snarled. “Only the person that controls the sigil on the demon can choose to release them from it. Though if they died the demon would also be set free, if you wanted more options.”

“While I agree in principle,” Amity began, “I think we should probably try to  _ capture  _ the person who did this first before we jump straight to murder. I’m already in enough trouble with my superiors as it is at this point.”

“Are you kidding me? You just uncovered some kind of secret plot to frame Eda by evil demon-enslaving assholes - you deserve a promotion,” Luz said.

Amity was about to reply when a loud drawn-out creaking sound split the air.

“Guardian Blight - are you in here?” a low, deep voice called out from the distance.

Luz and Amity jerked around toward the direction of the sound.

“Who is that?” Luz whispered.

“It sounds like Inquisitor Wrath - he’s the Guardian’s chief investigator,” Amity whispered back.

“I guess your beacon backup arrived quicker than expected,” Luz said.

“Yes, and that means that you need to get out of here right now!” Amity hissed. “If the other Guardians find you I might not be able to protect you from them.”

Luz looked unsure, so Amity pressed on.

“Get going already - don’t worry, we have the demon safely here in custody and combined with my testimony we should have enough evidence to clear Eda’s name,” Amity assured her. “Just… trust me to do the right thing.”

Luz’s expression softened at the sincerity in Amity’s plea and she nodded her agreement.

“I do trust you,” she said. “Okay, King and I will get out of your hair. I’ll even let you take all the credit for the awesome detective work I did today.”

“You can’t take credit for mine though,” King said.

A warm smile spread across Amity’s face.

“I really couldn’t have done it without either of you,” she said with complete sincerity. “Now hurry up and go right this second before I start throwing fireballs at you!”

Amity watched with her heart in her throat as Luz disappeared through a side door, just as the heavy shuffling footsteps of Inquisitor Wrath drew closer to the double-doors connecting this room to the outer chamber of the factory.

“I’m in here, Inquisitor,” Amity called out, so as not to startle the senior Guardian when he walked through the door.

Wrath had been known to react  _ sharply  _ to being startled. No one at the Hall liked bringing up the last time the members of his squad had tried throwing a surprise birthday party for him. It had taken weeks to get all the stains out of the break room carpet.

The double doors creaked open and revealed the towering form of the Inquisitor, although only his large size indicated his identity - the human-illusion that had been cast over his features completely hiding his true form. Demons like Wrath needed a little more work than just some minor cosmetic tweaking around the ears to be able to blend in with human crowds.

There was a short, surly looking witch with pale blue hair accompanying Wrath who Amity recognized as being a member of the Inquisitor’s squad, but who she didn’t really know otherwise. The more senior witches and demons of the Inquisition’s department tended to consider themselves above mixing with mere patrol Guardians like Amity.

“Guardian Blight,” Wrath greeted her with professional calm. “We were in the area rounding up the last of the human witnesses for memory purging when we felt your beacon. What’s going on here?”

Amity’s mind raced as she tried to find a way to frame the story of her investigation without leaving a hint of Luz’s involvement in it.

If any of the other Guardians found out about her, much less the Inquisitor himself, they would have the human trussed up and hauled off to the Guardian Hall in an instant. Since Amity was the Guardian who had discovered her she would even be the one expected to wield the memory-pluckers herself, to root out every thought that she could find in the young human’s head about the existence of witches and magic and then alter or destroy them to protect the sacred secrecy of the community.

That thought had sent a stab of real pain lancing through Amity’s chest, and she grit her teeth and dismissed it instantly.

She would just have to leave Luz out of her report. The others wouldn’t know if she didn’t tell them, right?

Submitting a false report was a major violation of her oath, and the price she would pay if that deception was ever uncovered would be steep. Ejection from the ranks of the Guardians and social disgrace once her crime was made public at the very least. No doubt there would also be additional punishments that would be handed down by the Council as well, and some of its very oldest members who had actually been born and raised in the Demon Realm instead of Earth had a fairly stark view of what constituted fair punishment.

But none of that mattered because Amity would not, could not, do that to Luz.

Not again.

“I followed some new leads who revealed that human witnesses had encountered a flying beast last night. Edalyn Clawthorne had an alibi with a witness for her whereabouts at that time, so I left her under guard and went looking for evidence,” Amity said.

“Stepping a bit beyond your authority there, patrol Guardian,” the witch at Wrath’s side sneered.

Amity stiffened but continued her report.

“My investigation revealed an area where a large creature had been wounded by human weapons and I used a blood tracking spell to trace it back here. When I had first arrived the enslaved demon in that cage had an illusion cast over it to make it appear to be the Owl Lady,” Amity said. “I believe that Edalyn Clawthorne has been the victim of a hoax, and that there is a witch or witches who have committed numerous crimes in an attempt to have her punished without just cause. I recommend that we drop the case against her and begin looking for that unknown witch attempting to frame her without delay.”

Inquisitor Wrath’s human mask twisted into a speculative expression.

“And you managed to uncover all of this while working on your own over the course of a single afternoon?” the demon rumbled out in his low voice.

Amity swallowed.

“Yes, sir,” she said.

Wrath’s illusory human face split into a wide grin.

“By the Titan, that is impressive work!” he said with a deep chuckle.

Amity felt twin spots of blush boom on her face. Wrath was known to be as stingy with his praise as he was easy with his violence - a compliment like that could be career changing if her fellow Guardians heard about it.

“Thank you, sir,” she said.

“Damned impressive,” Wrath murmured once more.

When the blow came Amity was taken completely by surprise, and the wind was knocked right out of her lungs as Wrath’s meaty fist sank into her stomach.

She dropped to the floor with a gasping groan, stars of pain blooming before her eyes. It was a few moments before she realized that in the time she had fallen a binding spell had been laid over her - thick chains of glowing green energy that constricted tightly around her limbs and left her unable to draw a proper spell-circle.

“I regret this, Blight,” Wrath said in a sad voice. “I really do. You would have made a fine Inquisitor one day with a mind like yours. None of this would have been necessary if you had just followed your orders and brought in the Owl Lady like you were supposed to.”

If she wasn’t already barely able to draw breath from Wrath’s sucker punch, the shock of hearing that would have left Amity speechless.

The witch beside Wrath pointed his casting finger at her, and she felt sweat bead on her forehead at the angry red glow of the magic that traced its way through the air, but before he could complete the spell circle Wrath cut him off with a curt gesture.

“No, not here,” Wrath said. “We’ll make sure that her body gets found at the Owl Lady’s shop. Guardian Blight will have died in the line of duty when Eda Clawthorne was resisting arrest and viciously struck her down.”

The blue haired witch at Inquisitor Wrath’s side smirked at that grim prediction and Amity struggled against the ghostly chains snared around her limbs in an attempt to break free and blast his smug face to pieces.

“Don’t worry, patrol Guardian,” he said. “We’ll make sure that you get a hero’s funeral for your sacrifice.”


	3. Chapter 3

The coppery tang of blood filled Luz’s mouth, a sharp sting of pain radiating out from the cut on the inside of her cheek. She’d scraped it while biting down hard to stop herself from shouting when the deep-voiced Guardian, who was about the size and shape of a luxury refrigerator, had slammed his huge fist into Amity’s stomach and sent her crashing to the ground with a pained wheeze.

Luz could only see so much of what was going on from her vantage point through the crack in the doorway, but at least she knew that Amity was still breathing and that the jumbo-sized asshole had used a spell to tie her up after she had fallen.

Luz hoped that was a good sign - they probably wouldn’t have wasted the time or energy tying up a corpse.

Every instinct that Luz possessed was screaming at her to rush through the door right now and save the restrained witch, but she knew that she wouldn’t be any good to Amity dead and she was already outnumbered two to one as it was. Her only ally at the moment was King and, demon or not, he wasn’t a match for anything larger than a raccoon in a fight.

_ Be patient and pick your moment _ , Luz reminded herself.

She eased the messenger bag off of her shoulder so that it wouldn’t throw her off balance when it was time to move. King glanced up at her from the bag with an inquisitive expression on his face, but Luz shook her head and put a shushing finger to her lips. The demon nodded in reluctant agreement and hunched down low in the bag as asked. Luz reached down and drew out the handful of folded glyph pages which she had torn out of her binder earlier from her jacket pocket.

Four glyphs, all ones that Eda had forced her to practice using over and over again until she was sure of Luz’s control over them.

She hoped they would be enough.

She activated the first glyph, focussing her concentration on shaping its form and keeping its magic contained while she waited for the right time to act.

The two backstabbing Guardians standing over Amity were talking now, but their voices weren’t carrying all the way across the large room and Luz couldn't quite make out what they were saying. The smaller one gestured toward the magical cage which contained the enslaved demon, but the big one (Luz just remembered that Amity had called him ‘Wrath’ earlier) didn’t appear to care for whatever his subordinate was suggesting and cut him off mid-sentence with a sharp chopping motion of his hand. He pointed down at Amity, who was struggling in her magical bonds and had now recovered enough of her breath to start cursing up a storm at her former colleagues. Luz felt her heart crawl its way up her chest and lodge itself in her throat.

_ Please don’t let them hurt her _ , Luz prayed over and over again in her mind to any vaguely benevolent force in the universe that might be willing to listen to her.

Several long seconds passed and Luz impatiently tensed her legs to spring out, screw waiting for the right moment, when the two Guardians suddenly turned completely away from her hiding spot behind the side door and focussed their attention on the caged demon.

_ Now _ !, she thought.

Luz drew back her foot, kicked the door open with a wordless shout and then flung the hissing ball of green fire floating above her hand at the back of the huge Guardian called Wrath. Magical flames splashed across the already-straining fabric of his cheap suit, and the giant bellowed in pain as he slapped at the brilliant emerald fire blossoming across his torso.

The smaller, blue-haired witch had whirled in Luz’s direction, his eyes wide and fingers extended to fire off a spell of his own, but he squawked with surprise and fell over before he could even begin to cast it.

Luz smiled in grim satisfaction as the vine she'd summoned using her plant glyph coiled itself tighter around the witch's ankles.  With a surge of willpower Luz directed the magical vine to lash itself like an enormous whip, lifting the unfortunate witch completely off from the ground and then smashing him down hard onto the concrete floor with a startled yelp.

_ Two glyphs left _ , Luz thought as adrenaline coursed through her veins.

Wrath’s wordless bellows had shifted from pain to rage as the fire trailing across his body smouldered out. Luz felt her mouth go dry when the giant whirled around to face her, wreathed in smoke and reeking of burned meat. The masking illusion which had been disguising the Guardian as a human being had completely fallen away from him now. Tiny yellow eyes that glowed like candle flames glared at her from a purple-grey face that seemed to be mostly just teeth. Many, many, extremely sharp-looking teeth. Even the smallest of them were still larger than Luz’s thumbs.

“A human?” the demon rumbled, with obvious surprise in its bass-and-gravel voice.

Luz activated her third glyph, but kept it clenched tight in her fist to hide it from sight.

“Yeah. A human,” she said, trying her best to sound defiant.

Somehow, Wrath’s lipless mouth managed to twist itself into something that vaguely resembled a grin.

“Perfect! I was just thinking about having a snack,” the giant purple-skinned nightmare rumbled as he began to stalk toward her.

Luz’s mind raced, albeit unhelpfully, because her only thought at the time was “ _ oh crap oh crap oh crap _ ” playing on repeat.

She braced herself and clenched her fist even tighter around the warm pulse of the spell glyph crumpled in her hand, desperate to regain some sense of control over the situation.

“Abomination, rise!” a beautifully familiar voice shouted.

Luz’s attention managed to shift for a fraction of a second away from the lightly-seared and extremely homicidal demon and she felt her heart soar at the sight of Amity surging back onto her feet, looking utterly furious.

The green-haired witch’s face was locked in a snarl, lips drawn back over her inhumanly long canines and her eyes burning gold in the shadows of the dimly lit factory. A vast ring of coruscating violet energy had appeared from out of the ground in front of Amity, surrounding a pair of huge, goopy hands which were clawing their way out from the darkness within.

_ How is she somehow even hotter when she’s pissed off?,  _ Luz had time to wonder, before self preservation forced her to turn her undivided attention back to the immediate threat posed by the enraged demon currently stomping his way toward her.

Either he hadn't noticed that Amity was no longer tied up and helpless, or he was just so unbelievably angry at Luz that he didn't care.

Wrath rolled his shoulders and tensed the muscles in one of his tree-trunk thick arms. The flesh began to warp and twist like clay right before Luz’s eyes until his left hand was transformed into a sickle-shaped blade with a glittering edge.

“You know, I’ve always been just a little bit curious about what a human would taste like,” Wrath said in a conversational tone as he drew closer to Luz, lazily swinging his blade-hand back and forth at his side as if to warm it up.

“Yeah? Well, how about you just eat some of this instead?” Luz said in her best attempt at an action-movie-hero voice. She drew back the arm holding her activated glyph and then launched a second fireball at the demon’s face.

The huge purple hand on Wrath’s un-transformed right arm whipped out lightning-fast and snatched the fireball from the air. The enormous fist tightened around the burning orb with a crackling hiss, and then the demon’s fingers opened wide to reveal that only a small puff of ash and a faint wisp of green smoke remained of Luz’s spell.

“Pathetic,” Wrath chuckled.

An even larger purple hand made of magical slime shot out from behind Wrath to clamp itself over the demon’s entire head and then lifted him right off of his feet.

“Malingale,” Amity said in a commanding voice. “Throw!”

The huge abomination obeyed with gusto and flung the bellowing demon  _ through  _ the nearby cinder block wall with an earth shaking explosion of noise, sending a plume of dust and debris blasting back into the room. The gust of disturbed air blowing by whipped the wild mane of Amity’s hair about her face and her lips were drawn back in a triumphant grin.

_ If we survive this I’m going to marry that girl _ , Luz thought as her heart jackhammered away in her chest in a deeply confusing mixture of terror and attraction.

_ Or at least work up the courage to ask her out on a date, anyway. _

Amity turned away from the Wrath-sized crater in the wall and her eyes lost their predator-sharpness as they lit up at the sight of Luz. The witch dashed toward the still-awestruck human with a joyous smile on her face but stumbled to a halt a few steps short of colliding with her. Amity quickly folded her open arms tight across her chest and the witch’s expression sharpened into a firm yet slightly unconvincing scowl.

“I thought I told you to run away earlier,” Amity scolded, though the stern note in her voice seemed especially forced when she did.

Luz’s eyebrows shot up in surprise at Amity’s abrupt change in attitude, and she crossed her own arms in response.

“I think we’ve run into a bit of a cultural misunderstanding here,” Luz said in a snarky tone. “Traditionally, humans say ‘thank you’ to the people who save their lives.”

Amity's stern look held for only a moment longer before it collapsed into a snort of laughter, and then Luz couldn’t hold back a laugh of her own at the sight of the witch’s reaction. All the stress and adrenaline flooding Luz’s body had left her nerves buzzing wildly with energy.

“Thank you very much for saving me,” Amity said, without a hint of sarcasm in her voice. “Honestly, I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t shown up.”

A million thoughts were racing through Luz’s brain at lightning speed at that moment. Shock at having seen Amity betrayed by the other Guardians, wondering about the mystery behind the plot to frame Eda, the fact that she had almost ended up being devoured by a demon just moments ago. But first and foremost in her mind was just how intensely  _ happy  _ she felt at seeing Amity back on her feet and being her usual too-serious-for-her-own-good self again. Those brief minutes where she had seen the witch helpless and in danger had felt like some of the most terrifying moments in Luz's entire life and she never wanted to repeat the experience.

“Thank you for saving my life, too,” Luz said quietly. “After that Wrath guy caught my fireball I thought I was toast.”

The last hints of the forced scowl on Amity’s face fell away and Luz felt a shiver travel up her spine when the witch’s amber eyes met hers squarely and, for the first time that day, didn’t immediately look away.

“I would never let anything like that happen to you, Luz,” Amity said with an unexpectedly tender note in her voice.

Luz felt a tug deep in her chest pulling her toward Amity, and the witch held her ground and didn’t step away when Luz closed the distance between them. She had an almost overpowering urge to be close to Amity at this moment, and she had no idea what to do with all of these sudden and unexpectedly intense feelings.

A scent like the faintest hint of smoke tickled the back of Luz’s nose for an instant, but then was gone.

“Amity,” Luz began. “I-”

“Kill them!” a voice shrieked. “Kill both of them!”

Luz spun on her heels and saw the blue haired Guardian who she had body slammed into the concrete with her plant-glyph had staggered back onto his feet while they were both distracted. Blood was streaming down half of his face from a huge gash in his forehead and his eyes were wide and crazed. In his left hand he was raising a palm-sized silvery medallion high over his head. It had a symbol stamped on it that glowed like molten iron.

Luz’s excellent memory for visual details helpfully chimed in at that point, allowing her to instantly recognize the curves and angles of the glowing symbol.

_ Isn’t that the summoning sigil thing King told us about?  _

“Oh shit,” Amity said quietly.

A shrieking howl tore through the air. The glowing blue bars of the magical cage in the center of the room disintegrated and the boar-bat demon charged out, heading straight toward Luz and Amity.

"Malingale, attack!" Amity shouted, directing her idle abomination at the demon with a stab of her finger.

Luz was no expert on the nature of the big purple goo-monsters Amity controlled, but she could already tell that the howling boar-faced demon charging their way seemed much faster on its six feet than her abomination was on its two pillar-like legs. She grabbed Amity by the arm and pulled the stubborn witch after her, narrowly avoiding the charging beast as it tore past them in a rush of foul smelling air and shrieking cries. The two women stumbled, but miraculously managed to keep their balance in the demon's wake.

With a start, Luz suddenly remembered that she still had a slightly crumpled sheet of blue paper clutched tight in her free hand.

_ I already used both of my fire glyphs and the plant one too, so that just leaves me with ice now _ , she thought.

Amity wrenched her arm free from Luz's grip and shot the human an almost pleading look.

"Just get behind me - I'll take care of this," she said.

Luz wanted to argue, but nodded in agreement instead. The less distracted Amity was from worrying about her safety right now, the better. She ran her fingertips along the edge of the glyph paper in her hand and her mind raced between trying to think up some way to use her single ice spell to stop the demon, and wondering if it would be possible to run back to her binder to grab more glyph pages without being torn to pieces in the attempt.

Meanwhile, the enslaved demon had skidded to a halt with a deafening screech as its claws gouged into the concrete to help it regain its footing. Luz saw that the abomination, Malingale, had finally managed to reach the demon in a lumbering run with its enormous fists raised in the air like twin hammers ready to smash the creature flat.

With a shriek of defiance, the boar-faced monster reared up on its back legs, spread its other four limbs wide and flared out its leathery wings. Luz thought that the demon had looked big before, but now it absolutely towered over the approaching purple golem.

Luz froze in shock as the demon lashed out again and again with all four of its claws. Each terrifyingly fast slash from its frying pan sized paws ripped huge lumps out of the abomination's goopy body and sent them splattering across the floor. Whatever magic that had been holding the abomination together gave away in the face of that furious assault, and the tattered remains of the golem collapsed into an inert puddle of sludge in moments.

As Malingale fell, several orbs of fuchsia-tinted fire shot out from Amity's furiously casting hands, exploding on impact with the victorious demon.

"That abomination took me  _ weeks  _ to create!" she shouted, rapidly tracing more spell circles in the air to launch a second wave of fiery attacks at the demon.

"I don't think it's working," Luz said in a panicked voice as the smoke cleared away to reveal a completely unharmed batswine.

It seemed that the noise and flashing light of Amity's attacks had temporarily startled the demon, but its flesh was immune to the flames themselves. The demon shook its huge head, blinked its row of eyes and then dropped back onto all six legs and crouched low with a growl. Luz could see the massive muscles in the beast's limbs tensing as it prepared to spring toward them.

_ Well, if fire didn't hurt it then ice probably should, right? _ , Luz thought.

_ I really hope that’s how this works anyway. _

Time seemed to slow for Luz at that moment, as a plan crystalized in her mind.

As the batswine leapt forward, Luz dashed past Amity to slap her now-activated ice glyph onto the ground.

There was an instant of pure chaos as several very loud and very fast things happened all at once.

Luz felt all of the breath leave her body when the full weight of the squealing demon slammed into her. She flew through the air on impact, feeling boneless as a ragdoll, and then hit the wall with a tooth rattling thump that reminded her that she actually did still have bones and that they could also feel pain. A lot of it.

Black spots danced in front of Luz's eyes as she pushed herself up off of the ground with her shaking arms and then leaned back against the wall she had just struck with a full-body wince. She could dimly see the slumped form of the demon lying collapsed on its side in a pool of green-black blood in the distance, it's paws twitching weakly. An icicle thicker than Luz's leg had impaled itself straight through the demon's chest, with its darkly stained point thrusting out from between the creature's now-limp wings.

_ Oh hey, it worked _ , Luz thought woozily at the sight of the fallen demon.

_ And I'm not dead either... bonus! _

For some reason it was hard for Luz to keep her eyes open and the room looked blurry. She tried to shake her head to clear away the fuzzy feeling, but the wave of nausea that followed told her immediately that it had been a bad idea.

"Luz!" a voice shouted.

Amity was running toward her with a stricken look on her face. Luz drew in a deep breath (dear god, how did just  _ breathing  _ manage to hurt this much?) and tried to stand up to meet her but her legs refused to support her weight and a jolt of pain ripped out from her thigh.

Luz looked down and saw that the left leg of her jeans had been slashed open and there was a deep cut running from just above her knee all the way up to her hip. The flesh around the wound was slowly turning a disquieting cyan color like a stain spreading through cloth.

_ Oh. _

_ That's probably not good. _

Amity had reached her now, and the witch dropped down to kneel at Luz's side. She pulled Luz up from her slump by her shoulders and crushed her tight in an unexpected but far from unwelcome hug. The frantic witch was saying something but the words sounded indistinct and tinny in Luz's ears.

Luz reached out and traced her fingers along the side of Amity's face, wishing she had some way to wipe away that pained expression crumpling her lovely features.

Then everything went dark.

* * *

Amity's heart slammed to a stop in her chest when Luz's eyes closed.

_ Titan, no _ , she thought frantically as her vision blurred with tears.

_ I just found you again... _

She placed the tips of her trembling fingers at Luz's throat and felt a dizzying wave of relief when she saw that there was still a pulse there, strong and steady. Now that she was looking more closely Amity could also see that Luz's chest was rising and falling with the deep, rhythmic breaths of sleep as well. Human or not, Luz had always been stronger than she looked. Amity knew that now, more than ever.

_ Okay, okay... she's alive, thank the Titan she's still alive... _

She didn't look good, though.

Luz's normally warm brown skin was now ashen and dull, and the left leg of her jeans was soaked through with blood. Amity pulled the torn and sticky fabric aside to examine the wound, then swallowed heavily at the sight of the strange teal color of the flesh surrounding the injury. She cursed her lack of skill at healing magic - all Guardians were required to know the basics, but she had never gone beyond learning the standard first aid techniques taught to her in training. Amity traced a spell circle for a simple healing charm over the injury and sighed with relief as the flow of blood oozing from the wound was halted by her magic. The worrying blue-green color tinting Luz's flesh still remained, but at least it had stopped visibly spreading outward from the site of the injury for now.

Amity shuddered and bit back a sob as a raw, dark feeling welled up inside of her chest and threatened to smother her from within.

_ 'I would never let anything like that happen to you Luz' - how could I ever have been arrogant enough to make a promise like that to her? _ , Amity thought viciously.

_ I've never been able to protect Luz. Not when we were kids and not today, even though my whole fucking job now is supposed to be protecting people. All I ever do is hurt her, over and over again. _

The witch clenched her teeth and choked back on the self-loathing that was clouding her mind. She didn't have the luxury of being able to wallow in self pity right now. She scrubbed her eyes dry with the back of her hand in two harsh movements and tried to focus on the task at hand.

The demon was no longer a threat at least, thanks to Luz, but Amity suddenly remembered that she had lost track of the Inquisition squad witch who had commanded its actions during all the chaos of the attack.

At the thought of Wrath and his partner, Amity's heartbeat began to speed up once more with a furious rhythm. She could feel the wild, electric pulse in her veins as her bile sack began to flood her body with its stores of pure liquid magic which demanded to be released.

Amity conjured a ball of hissing fuschia flames larger than her head and glared around the warehouse, trying to find where her former colleagues could be hiding now. Luz would never have been hurt if it wasn't for those two, and the pounding drumbeat of magic coursing through Amity's body was screaming that she should burn them both to ashes for it.

"If you're planning to throw that at those other guys, then you’re too late. They already left," said a high pitched voice from somewhere around the level of Amity's knees.

Amity dropped her eyes and saw that it was Luz's friend, King. The small demon had completely abandoned his canine disguise and was lurching forward on two legs, dragging Luz's messenger bag over toward the fallen human with a number of whiny grunts and frustrated curses.

"How can you be so sure?" Amity asked.

"Because I was paying attention," King snapped. "The big guy and the other one took off while you and Luz were distracted fighting the batswine. I can't even smell them in the building anymore."

The magic in Amity's veins surged with fury at being cheated of its chance to be unleashed. She had trusted the little demon's nose to lead her all around the unfamiliar city of Cypress earlier, though, so if King said that Wrath and the other Inquisitor were gone then she knew it was probably true. Amity released the energy of the spell she was holding, and the ball of pink flames dissipated into a harmless cloud of drifting sparks.

"I should call in to the Hall and report to the Commander," Amity said in a weary voice. "The other Guardians need to know what Wrath and his partner have done here today."

"Yeah, because the last time you called the Guardians for help that worked  _ so  _ well," King snapped.

Amity bristled at the demon's remark.

"I can't just let Wrath and his partner run off like that without at least telling someone about all of this!" Amity snapped back.

"And what if the next Guardian you talk to is also part of whatever scheme those two were involved in? How do you know they won't just send even more guys out to hunt you down once they learn that the batswine didn't manage to finish you off?" King demanded.

A leaden feeling settled in the pit of Amity's stomach at the demon's words.

King was right. She hadn't exactly  _ liked  _ Inquisitor Wrath - she wasn't sure that anyone at the Hall did - but Amity had always respected him, at least. He had been a member of the Guardians since the organization was first founded. If a senior Guardian like Wrath was a part of something like this, there was no telling who she could trust right now.

_ What about Eda, though? _ , Amity thought.  _ Counselor Clawthorne believed she was innocent right from the start. _

_ Obviously the person that Wrath and his accomplices are trying to frame wouldn't be a part of whatever all of this is... and she's Luz's friend too. _

_ She might be the only person I can trust right now who might know what we should do next. _

Amity heard a whimper from below that caught her attention and dragged her mind away from its speculations. King had dropped the canvas messenger bag at her feet and was nudging his head up against the slumped over form of Luz with urgent whining sounds. The little demon turned his yellow-pink eyes up to Amity with what she assumed was a serious expression, though it was hard to tell since most of his face was a mask of immobile bone.

"Forget about calling any of your other Guardian friends for a minute - we've got a real emergency here. Luz needs a healer right away," the demon said gravely. "Batswine tusks are venomous, and I think this cut on her leg was caused by one. I don't know what effect their poison would have on a human, but I know that a witch that gets enough of that stuff in them won't survive long without treatment. That spell you cast on her slowed the spread, but the poison is still inside her body."

Any relief that Amity had been feeling earlier when she had managed to stabilize Luz's bleeding leg vanished at King's dire pronouncement, and her mind raced.

The only skilled healers she knew were all in New Bonesborough, which was too far of a trip to make if the situation was as critical as King indicated. If there were any other rogue Guardians like Wrath out patrolling the borders of the town, they would be able to spot her coming from miles away, which would complicate matters further. Not to mention the fact that as a human, Luz wasn't even allowed inside the town in the first place and the healers might not even deign to treat her.

"Does Eda know enough healing magic to be able to cure something like this?" Amity asked.

King shook his bony head.

"Eda's way better at using magic for taking things apart than she is at putting them back together - but I know someone here in Cypress that should be able to do it easily," the demon said. "We need to get Luz over to see them as fast as we can, though."

Amity nodded. She closed her eyes and summoned up her staff. Flying would be far faster and easier than walking or raising one of her remaining abominations to carry the unconscious human through town.

Technically it was a huge violation of the Guardian rules to fly over any heavily populated human city where a witch could be easily spotted, but given the circumstances Amity couldn't have cared less about any of that right now. Luz's health and safety came first. The fact that two of her fellow Guardians had tried to kill her not that long ago also wasn't leaving her feeling too loyal to her oath at the moment, either.

"I'm going to let Eda know what's happening before we leave," Amity told King. "If Wrath is after her she needs to be warned right away."

"Good thinking," King agreed. "How are you going to do that though?"

Amity grimaced.

"The hard way, unfortunately," she said.

The witch closed her eyes and then opened her mind to Gildersnake, the abomination which she had left guarding Eda in her shop that morning. She felt her mind's grip on her body grow light and loose as she deepened the strength of her connection with the golem, creating a pathway between them through the aether.

There was a terrifying instant of disconnection as Amity's consciousness leapt out from her own body and then streamed across the distance between her and Gildersnake, fast as the speed of thought.

With a jolt, Amity suddenly found herself miles away and sharing space in her abomination’s head with its own rudimentary intelligence. There was a disorienting lurch as she tried to adjust herself to the feel of its bulky, artificial body all around her. Her sense of vision through the abomination's disproportionally tiny eyes was murky and everything was tinted in shades of green, but she could see that she was standing in what she assumed was the back room of Eda's shop, watching intently as the older witch was stirring a large cauldron filled with oily fluid over a burner and humming tunelessly under her breath.

"Eda," Amity groaned out in the abomination’s gasping voice.

The grey haired witch jumped up with a curse, dropping the wooden spoon she was using to stir her potion straight into the cauldron and spinning about with one hand clenched tight over her heart.

"Holy Titan!" she hissed in surprise. "What, are you suddenly so bored that you just felt like having a conversation, you big goopy jerk?"

"This is Amity speaking to you right now," she explained.

Eda cocked her head in an oddly birdlike gesture at that statement.

"Are you telling me that you can mind-jump into that thing?" Eda said. "That's a pretty impressive technique. But what was so important that you had to tell me in this uniquely disturbing way instead of just asking Luz to call me on her phone like a normal person?"

Amity felt a stab of guilt at the mention of Luz, but pressed on.

"You may be in serious danger right now. Some renegade witches in the Guardians were using an enslaved demon to impersonate you and create false Owl Lady sightings," Amity continued. "A Guardian named Wrath was behind the attempt to blame you. We have already confronted him, but he escaped and he may be coming after you soon. Do you have a safe location where you can hide out at? Preferably some place with decent magical defenses?"

Eda's eyebrows shot up.

"Wait, Wrath?" Eda said. "Big purple guy? Deep voice? Has a nice smile but a terrible attitude?"

Amity suppressed a shudder of revulsion at the 'nice smile' part of Eda's description of the Inquisitor, but nodded the abomination’s crudely-shaped lump of a head in agreement.

"I bet he’s still just mad at me because I turned him down when he tried to ask me out to Grom forty years ago," Eda mused. "But yeah, I do have a safe house of sorts... If you were already attacked then you guys should meet me there so that we can figure out how to straighten all of this crap out. Luz can tell you where the place is."

Amity shook the abomination's head.

"We can't go yet," she said. "Luz has been hurt. Your familiar is going to guide me to a healer."

Eda looked like she had just been struck.

"Luz is hurt? How badly? What happened!" the older witch shouted, grabbing the abomination by its lumpy shoulders and shaking it vigorously.

"It would take too long to explain and we need to hurry," Amity said. "I promise I will do everything that I can to keep Luz safe and get her back to you as quickly as possible."

Eda's face stiffened into a fearsome scowl, and Amity instinctively took a lurching step back in the abomination's huge body at the look in her eyes.

"You'd better," she said in a low voice. "Because there won't be anywhere in the world you can hide from me if you don't."

Amity nodded a quick agreement, left new instructions with her abomination to only guard the shop against intruders and not obstruct Eda's movements, and then broke the connection.

There was a nauseating moment of disorientation as she found her mind back in her own body once more.

_ Ugh, I hate doing that _ , she thought. _ Why does it always feel so  _ wrong  _ to suddenly have a skeleton again whenever I jump back? I've had one my entire life! _

"Okay, Eda's been warned," she told King in a bleary voice. "Help me get Luz onto the staff, we need to move quickly."

The small demon pointed at Luz's messenger back.

"Don't forget to take this too," he said sternly. "Luz is going to want it when she wakes up. It's important to her."

Amity reached down and slung the bag up over her shoulder.

She really hoped that King was right: both about the skills of this healer he was going to be leading her to, and about Luz waking up soon.

* * *

Luz opened her eyes and then stretched her arms out overhead with a satisfied groan. The feel of the tree bark pressing up against her back was rough but not painful and the warm touch of the sun on her skin had combined with her short rest to leave her feeling totally re-energized.

"Having yourself a little cat nap, Noceda?" a voice asked playfully.

Luz grinned and turned to see the voice's owner walking toward her from the nearby thicket of trees. She had always arrived this way, ever since Luz had shown her where her house was - moving through the small patch of woodland that connected the forest surrounding Cypress up with her back yard rather than travelling along the streets. It was just one of the many mysterious things about her that Luz found utterly fascinating.

Luz flipped the cat-eared hood of her hoodie down over the top of her head and made a pawing motion at the girl.

"Meow meow," she said in a thoroughly unconvincing cat voice.

The sound of the girl's giggling response to her terrible cat impression sent a warm zing through Luz's chest.

"Is there a reason that you always try to sneak up on me out from the trees like some sort of super cute sasquatch instead of just knocking on my door?" Luz asked her.

The girl rolled her eyes.

"Because every time I tried that your mom said that you were already hanging out back here," she said. "I thought I'd save myself the trouble."

Luz had to concede the point. Summers were just too beautiful to spend them cooped up indoors. Even just reading a book outside under the shade of a tree felt nicer than doing it while stuck up in her room.

Luz felt that this summer had been an especially nice one, though, and not just because of the weather.

"If you’re here, does that mean that it’s already Wednesday?" Luz asked in an exaggeratedly confused voice. "I was pretty sure that we weren't doing another book club meeting again until Wednesday, right?"

The girl's face flushed and she tightened her arms across her chest defensively.

"I was just feeling bored at home," she said. "I thought that maybe coming over here would be a less dull way to spend the day."

"Oh?" Luz asked in a drawn out voice. "So, you're saying that hanging out with me is exciting for you?"

The flush on the girl's face deepened and she narrowed her eyes.

"Maybe in an aggravating kind of way, sure," she said in an off-hand manner.

Luz grinned at her response. She was always so serious and prickly, even now. She stood up from her seat beneath her favorite old pine tree and then walked toward the girl.

"Nah," Luz said. "I think it's exciting because you  _ liiiike _ me."

"Keep that up and I might not  _ liiiike  _ you for much longer," the girl said in a dry voice.

Luz winced. She knew that the girl was joking... probably. Still, though, it was always a worry in the back of her mind. Her constant unvoiced fear that this amazing stranger who'd appeared out of nowhere might suddenly realize that she could do so much better than perennial outcast Luz Noceda. That she might vanish just as quickly when she eventually grew tired of her.

Luz pushed the negative thoughts from her mind. She wasn’t going to let herself ruin one of these rare visits by being a huge downer.

"Sorry," Luz said with a contrite smile. "I guess I was just feeling really happy to see you and it got me in a playful mood. I’m glad you were able to make it earlier than expected."

The girl's expression softened. She reached out and took Luz's hand in her own. Her skin felt cool to the touch, and her delicate fingers squeezed gently against Luz's palm.

"Well, aside from being bored I was also just missing you," the girl admitted in a quiet voice. "And I didn't want to have to wait until Wednesday to see my... my girlfriend again."

Luz's heart swelled near to bursting with joy at those words. It still almost didn't feel real to her that they were together like this. She wasn't sure that any feeling this amazing would ever be normal to her. Luz stroked the pad of her thumb across the back of the girl's hand and then pulled it up to her face to lay a kiss against her knuckles.

"I've been missing you too," she said. "I really wish that I could go and visit you at your place sometime. It’s not fair that you’re always the one that has to make the trip over."

The corner of the girl's mouth twitched downward and her brow furrowed.

"I wish that you could come see me too," she said. "But that's impossible, unfortunately."

Luz nodded in agreement. Her girlfriend had never been very forthcoming with details about her home life, but from what Luz could tell it didn't seem to be a very happy one. Every now and then she wanted to find out more, but was scared that bringing up such a delicate topic would end up driving the girl off. She already had a tendency to suddenly clam up midway through a conversation even when talking about ordinary things like what the classes were like at the private school she went to.

"Well, now that you're here with me, what would you like to do?" Luz asked in a quiet voice.

The girl shot Luz an impish smile and reached her arms up to wrap them around Luz's shoulders and tug the tall girl closer.

"This," she said as she leaned her face in toward Luz.

Luz instinctively met her halfway for a kiss. It was slow and sweet, and the feel of those soft lips against her own sent her heart racing into overdrive. Every kiss they had shared, and there still hadn't been nearly enough of those in Luz's opinion, had left her feeling so warm and light that she wondered how she ever managed to keep her feet on the ground.

Luz made a small noise of protest when the girl finally broke their kiss, and when she tried to lean in for another her girlfriend pulled her smiling lips back just out of reach. Luz knew that she must have had the dopiest expression on her own face from the way that the girl was grinning back at her.

Everything about this moment was utterly perfect. It felt just  _ right  _ in a way that nothing else had before in her life, although Luz couldn't say why.

Then the girl grabbed the pull-cords of Luz's hoodie, jerked them both tight to seal the hood shut over Luz's face and left her stumbling in the dark.

"And  _ that  _ is what you get for all that teasing you did earlier," the girl said in a faux-haughty tone.

Luz laughed as she tried to work the hood loose again so that she could find her girlfriend and extract some sort of appropriate revenge on her. It was always so tricky to loosen the cords up with this particular hoodie for some reason, but it was still her favorite one despite that.

She'd been so sad when she had finally outgrown it and had to send it off with her mom on her yearly trip to donate their old clothes to the local homeless shelter.

Luz paused in her struggles with the escape-proof hoodie to wonder at the oddness of that thought. Obviously she couldn't have outgrown it since she was still wearing it right now... it was even a little big on her. Where had that memory come from?

Luz finally managed to wrench the hood down from around her face with a triumphant ‘HA!’, and then felt the world lurch and spin around her.

The bright blue of the summer sky was now hazy and grey, and she could smell smoke on the wind.

The peaceful summer symphony of birdsong in the trees had been joined by another noise - a roaring crackle that she knew all too well as her other memories began to seep back into her consciousness.

"What's wrong, Luz?" her girlfriend asked her.

Luz turned toward her and her heart fell when she finally realized that she couldn't actually see the girl’s face. It was masked in shadows and distortion, completely unrecognizable.

_ It's happening again _ , she thought, with a feeling of sick resignation twisting in her gut.

Except... this time felt a little different, somehow.

This particular dream was one that she'd never had before. Luz was certain of that. This specific summer afternoon, this conversation, that kiss… they were all new to her. That bone-deep ache of loss she always felt in these dreams was still there, but there was another feeling running beneath it. It may have been a fragile thread of emotion that threatened to slip from her grasp at any moment, but it was still there.

It almost felt like hope.

The air had begun to grow harsh as smoke poured from between the trunks of the trees like a dark, malevolent mist. Sweat beaded on Luz's brow from the waves of heat, though the faceless girl seemed as unaware of the oncoming blaze as the birds that continued singing overhead.

_ Even if this is all just a dream it's still  _ my  _ dream _ , Luz thought.  _ Maybe I can do something about it? _

Luz bent down and grabbed a branch off of the ground. It was small and crooked but when she furrowed her brow and focussed on it the stick twisted and shifted until it became the same tall white staff with a glowing blue jewel set in its top that was on her favorite version of the Azura book covers.

_ What could I do to stop a fire? _

In a flash of inspiration she pictured the familiar curves and lines of the ice-glyph in her mind and felt the staff in her hand grow cold in response. 

_ It’s worth a try. _

The staff surged with energy in Luz’s hand as she spun it overhead in a circle, and a tall ring of ice-pillar walls sprouted up from the ground and threw back the encroaching flames in a blast of steam.

A wave of exhaustion swept through Luz and she staggered, leaning up against a nearby tree trunk for support.

_ I guess it figures that even in my dreams magic still isn’t easy. _

The hissing pop of the flames was muted now, but not gone. Something told her that the ice she had called up wouldn't last forever against them. The momentary spark of hope that had flared in her chest sputtered out. No matter what she tried, the fire would always win.

_ I’m always going to lose her in the end no matter what I try, aren’t I? _

Luz's numb fingers opened to drop the staff, and it hit the ground with a dry clatter as it became an ordinary stick once more. She walked over toward the faceless girl and pulled her into a tight hug.

“I’m sorry,” Luz said quietly.

Her eyes grew hot and wet with frustrated tears, but the trails they traced down her cheeks felt cool in the scorching air.

The girl hugged her back, hard, and buried her face in Luz's chest.

“It’s okay,” she whispered back in her distorted voice.

A shiver travelled up Luz's spine at those words. No matter what had happened during the course of her other dreams, the faceless girl had never responded to her like this before. She had always seemed locked into performing the same actions and saying the same words every time, without fail.

A tremendous cracking sound split the air as the walls of ice inevitably shattered in the heat of the flames. The end would come soon.

When Luz pulled away from the hug and looked down at the girl in her arms she could see that her features were still hidden behind a veil of shadows. 

But a pair of amber-gold eyes were now staring back up at Luz from out of the darkness.

* * *

Amity's flying staff had managed to make it halfway across the city before its already-depleted energy charge failed completely and sent Amity, Luz and King plummeting to the ground.

The tiny demon had scrambled up onto the witch's back and dug his claws into her shoulders while screaming at the top of his small (but apparently extremely powerful) lungs. Luz had remained silent during the fall, although this was because she was still unconscious and secured to the staff with a number of conjured magical restraints and not from any sort of bravado on her part.

Amity managed, with great difficulty, to start channeling her own body's magical energy straight into the staff and there was a jolting lurch as the staff went from inert to active once more. Amity pulled up hard and levelled the staff out in flight with a pained grimace, mere moments away from smashing them all into the roof of an apartment building.

Though that particular crisis had been averted the rest of the flight was still very draining, both mentally and physically. King's sense of direction from their vantage point high up in the air wasn't nearly as good as it was on the ground and there were several times where she had almost wanted to hurl the demon off the staff entirely when she was forced to turn around and fly in the complete opposite direction than the one he had been leading her in just moments before. Her heart was shuddering in her chest, both from sickening fear over whether they would find the healer in time to save Luz and from the strain of having to pour out her bile-sack’s stored reserves of magic to continue powering her faulty staff.

When King finally directed her to land in an alley behind a clustered group of businesses, Amity felt pathetically grateful for the chance to rest.

"Okay, we're here now," King said. "We need to get Luz in there!"

The demon pointed at a backdoor leading out into the alley from one of the businesses. Amity turned her tired eyes up to read the name spray painted above the door in blocky stenciled letters.

"Saint Puddles Discount Animal Hospital," she mumbled.

Amity was silent for a moment, then she reached down to grab King by the scruff of his neck and jerk him up to her eye level with a startled 'Weh!'

"You brought me to a  _ vet _ ?" Amity asked in a deceptively calm voice. "Why in the Titan's unspeakable name would I take a dying  _ human  _ to a vet? She's not a pet pixie with a crooked wing!"

"Trust me," King grunted as Amity shook him about. "The witch who runs this place is the best healer in all of Cypress! If she can't heal Luz then no one can!"

Amity wanted to scream out her frustration to the skies, but she nodded in reluctant agreement instead.

"Fine," she said through gritted teeth. "But if this vet of yours can't save Luz then I'm going to have them neuter you instead."

"You've really got to work on your anger issues," the little demon muttered as Amity set him back to the ground.

Amity lifted Luz up off the ground and onto her shoulder with a grunt and then staggered over to the door. She knocked several times, hard, with the top of her staff against the metal.

There was a wait of almost a minute, and Amity was about to knock again when the door was flung open with a cacophony of barks, growls and annoyed yowls. A harried looking young woman with brown hair tied up in a bun and a startling number of piercings in her ears was framed in the doorway and glaring at Amity with undisguised annoyance.

"Who are you and what do you want?" the woman snapped.

"My friend is-" Amity began.

"Clearly not an animal? Yes I can see that too," the woman continued. "I can call an ambulance for you, but we need to keep this area clear for any incoming patients who I  _ can  _ treat and not someone who looks like she just had a little too much to drink."

"Viney, it's okay - she's with me," King said.

The woman glanced down and her eyes shot open at the sight of King standing out in the open without any attempt to disguise his demonic appearance. She looked back again at Amity and finally seemed to realize that she wasn't human either.

"King, what are you doing here? You aren't due for your next checkup until August - what's going on?" the vet asked.

"It's Luz! She's been poisoned and we need your help," Amity said.

"Wait, that's Luz?" Viney asked in surprise.

She leaned in closer and grabbed Luz's unconscious face in her hands to examine her.

"I couldn't recognize her when her mouth wasn't moving," the vet said. "Titan, she looks bad. Get her in here right away - what kind of poison is she being affected by? Manticore sting? Cockatrice claws? Sasquatch bite? Did Eda try to make chili again?"

"Batswine venom," King said. "In her leg."

Viney sucked a sharp breath in between her clenched teeth at that and Amity felt her heart catch in her throat. People didn't tend to make that sort of noise when they encountered easily solved problems.

Amity followed Viney into the building, dragging Luz behind her while King tried to help with her long, dangling legs. The animal noises she had heard through the door from outside only increased in volume as she was led into a backroom area which had a row of cages containing the witch's patients lining the walls, as well as a number of examination tables and various trays and shelves full of medical equipment and surgical tools.

Viney glanced around the room until she spotted a clean table and then helped Amity lift Luz up onto the tabletop and lay her out flat. The healer leaned in close to Luz's injured leg and examined the wound with a professional eye.

"I've never actually treated an injury of this kind before," the brown haired witch said. "I didn't think there even were any demons like that in this realm."

"Can you do anything to help her?" Amity asked.

The healer's mouth settled into a firm line and she nodded.

"I only said that I haven't done this before, not that I couldn't," she said. "I'm going to need to get a few of my special tools from my office first, though. Most of my regular patients don't tend to have magic-related injuries."

"Is there anything I can do to help Luz while you do that?" Amity asked her.

Viney shrugged.

"Keep her company? Poisonings are tricky to deal with, but I just bought some new anti-venom potions from Eda last week and I'm positive that a few of my medical spell books have sections specifically on how to treat demon-inflicted wounds," the witch said.

As Viney hurried off down the hall, Amity found herself standing alone by the examination table and feeling completely helpless once more. The room reeked of animal musk and harsh chemical disinfectants, and Luz's skin looked even paler and more waxy in the glaring lights shining down from overhead. Amity hesitantly reached out a hand and placed her palm against Luz's forehead, then smoothed some of her loose locks of dark brown hair back from her sweat-slicked face.

"You're going to be okay now, Luz," Amity said quietly. "We're here at a healer's office, and King says that she's a very good one."

"I did say that, yes," King said.

Amity jumped in surprise and saw that the small demon had clambered up onto one of the examination tables right behind her. She felt embarrassed to have an audience but didn't back away from her place at Luz's side.

The muscles in Luz's face were making slight twitches and a quiet gasp squeezed out from between her lips as she shifted around on the table. Amity wasn't sure if she should be happy since this was the most activity that Luz had shown since she had fallen unconscious or worried that it was a bad sign.

"Why did you have to jump out in front of me like that? Why did you stay at all when I told you to run? You'd be safe right now if you had just left me behind like I asked you to." Amity told her in a pained whisper.

"Trying to keep Luz from doing things that are simultaneously brave and dumb is kind of a waste of time," King said from behind her. "Trust me, this isn't the first time that Viney has had to patch her up."

"That sounds like Luz, yeah," Amity said with a faint smile as bittersweet memories of their long summer days spinning tales of heroic fantasy together flashed through her mind.

"That's an awfully familiar sounding thing to say about her considering that you only met each other today," King said.

"I'm just an excellent judge of character I guess," Amity said quickly.

King made a little snort of disbelief but thankfully he didn't press any further.

"You care a lot about her, don't you?" the demon asked after a brief pause.

Amity squeezed her eyes shut and willed the tears away from her eyes. It was a skill she had perfected with long practice.

"Yes," she said.

Amity felt a pressure on her wrist and saw that the demon had reached out to her from his seat on the nearby tabletop to grab her free arm in his claws and give it a gentle squeeze.

"Me too," King said.

Amity accepted the demon's gesture of comfort, though she felt a little awkward doing so. She was always unsure about how to respond when receiving warm gestures like this. It was a situation that just hadn't come up that often in her life.

She was trying to think up some sort of acceptable form of reciprocation (would the demon be okay with a polite handshake or would he find it insulting?) when Viney bustled back into the room with a large satchel in one hand and several leather-bound books tucked under her other arm.

"Okay, I've got some good news here," Viney said.

The healer set her satchel down on top of the table King was sitting at and started to root through its contents as she continued speaking.

"According to both  _ Murmur's Magical Maladies _ and  _ Astaroth's Compendium of Demonic Diseases,  _ a batswine’s venom works on its prey by disrupting the flow of vital fluids throughout their body, leading to a fairly horrific death when the tainted fluids basically end up melting them from the inside out," the healer said in a cheerful voice.

"How is that good news?!" Amity screamed.

"Because the fluid that the venom affects is the magic bile found in witches and other creatures from the demon realm. Luz is a human though, so she doesn't have to worry about that happening to her at all since she's got about as much magical energy inside of her as a rock," Viney continued. "We still need to get the venom out of her of course. There’s no telling what kind of long term effects it might have on her body if we just left it sitting there. Her flesh turning aquamarine might be just the start of something worse.”

"I thought it was really more of a turquoise personally," King chimed in.

Amity knew in her heart that Luz's leg was obviously more of a teal shade but thought that this really wasn't the appropriate time to start debating the specifics.

"Well whatever color she's turning, I'm going to fix it," Viney said in a confident voice as she produced a large flask of opaque orange fluid and a short, ivory colored rod covered in densely packed runes from her satchel.

"Can I help in any way?" Amity asked.

"You can help me by getting  _ out _ of the way. Both of you," Viney added as she waved Amity and King back. "I'm going to need room to work and absolutely no distractions during the operation."

Questions crowded their way into Amity's mind, demanding to know how long it would be until the procedure was done and if Luz was going to be okay but she swallowed them down and walked off in the direction that Viney had been waving her toward.

The room she entered appeared to be some sort of small break room area. It was also obviously one that humans weren't permitted to access, considering that the walls had a few framed pictures hanging from them showing a much younger Viney without her human illusion on. In most of them she was accompanied by a small griffin - playing fetch with it by the lake located on the eastern side of New Bonesborough, feeding it treats from her hand or just relaxing together in the sun with her arms wrapped around its feathery neck.

Amity finished her initial circuit of the room, took in its various details and then continued to pace around along the edge of its walls. Thoughts of Luz lying back on that steel table wouldn't leave her mind.

King entered through the door shortly after Amity had made her fifth lap around the room. The demon walked past her to crawl up onto the ratty old couch set against the room’s back wall, circled around several times on all fours atop the central cushion and then curled up to nap.

"You can really go to sleep at a time like this?" Amity asked, a little more sharply than she had intended to.

The small demon opened one eye and stared back at her.

"Yes. It's not like pacing around back and forth is going to help Luz right now," King said. "Plus, we'll need to be rested and ready if we run into any more danger today."

Amity grunted out a grudging acknowledgement of the demon's logic, but continued her nervous pacing.

After she had made several more laps around the room the little demon made an irritated noise that was somewhere between a growl and a sigh.

"If you think that it would help you to calm down, I will allow you to sit here next to me on the couch and pet me," King said in a put-upon voice.

Amity stopped in her tracks and directed an incredulous stare at the demon.

"And why would I want to do something like that?" she asked.

King gave a small half-shrug, but didn't otherwise move from his curled up position.

"Beats me, but apparently Luz always found it very soothing when she was feeling stressed out," he said. "I thought it might be worth a try to offer."

Several rather sharp replies appeared at the tip of Amity's tongue but she banished them all. She stalked over to the ragged couch, sat down and then started to run her hands through the demon's short, wiry black fur. The demon made a pleasant rumbling sound and snuggled deeper into the cushion.

"Thank you," Amity said quietly as she continued to pet the demon.

It really was quite soothing after all.

* * *

The fire swept over Luz, as it always did in the end.

When she opened her eyes again she was forced to squint in the blinding white glare of the lights shining down above her. Her head felt like someone had pulled out her brain and replaced it with a thick wad of nasty old cobwebs and the inside of her mouth tasted astoundingly vile. Her left leg was stiff and oddly numb.

_ Well, this isn't quite as nice as kissing a pretty girl on a summer day but it's still better than being burned alive, so I guess I'll take it _ , Luz thought.

As her eyes adjusted themselves to the harsh light she saw that she was not alone in... wherever the hell this place was.

A pair of amber-gold eyes was staring down at her from out of a gorgeous face.

There was a disorienting moment of double-vision as the images from Luz's eyes and those swirling somewhere in the back of her mind blurred together. A name arrived at the tip of her tongue, both hauntingly familiar and strange at the same time.

"Amity?" Luz asked in an unsure voice.

"Luz! You're awake," the green haired witch said in an excited tone.

A red-hot spike of pain rammed itself through Luz's forehead and she squeezed her eyes shut tight again as the familiar headache that always accompanied the fire dreams washed over her.

The events of the last few hours came flooding back to her now, one after another.

_ God, today has been busy _ , Luz thought.

"Yeah, I'm up again," Luz said through gritted teeth.

"Thank the Titan," Amity said in a relieved voice. "I was so worried about you."

There was an irritated cough from somewhere down low.

"So was King," Amity added.

Luz smiled slightly. Something about the sound of the witch's voice made her post-dream headache seem not quite as excruciating as it usually was. She took a deep breath and frowned a little at the unusual scent in the air.

"Why do I smell dogs for some reason?" she asked.

"You were badly injured by the batswine so we had to take you to a healer," the witch explained. "We're in a vet’s office right now."

Luz opened her eyes once more and turned her head to give Amity a serious look.

"Amity, I know that you witches from New Bonesborough don't really think much of us humans but we're not animals," she said in a patient voice.

"We're here at Viney's place right now," King explained. "You were chock full of venom from that batswine you defeated and there wasn't time for us to set up a house call."

"Ah," Luz said. "That’s significantly less insulting then, I guess. Did you manage to catch those other two guys? Wrath and what's his name? The blue haired one?"

Amity shook her head.

"They both ran off after they set that demon loose on us," Amity said in a frustrated voice. "I have no idea where they are now."

Luz sighed.

"So, did Viney say how long it was going to take for me to recover from whatever it was that demon did to me?" she asked.

Her apprenticeship with Eda had been a fairly eventful one so far, and she was getting well acquainted with the need for rest and recovery after a particularly difficult lesson.

"You could leave right now if you wanted to actually," a familiar voice said from nearby. "You should be pretty much back to normal already except for a little soreness."

Luz pushed herself to sit upright on the table and saw Viney walking back into the room with a grin on her face.

"Hey Viney," Luz said with a happy wave. "Thanks for helping me out again!"

"Anytime, Luz. I'll just put the bill on Eda's tab as usual," the healer said.

_ Oh, I'm sure she's going to  _ love _ that _ , Luz thought with a wince.

"What do you mean she can go now?" Amity asked in a skeptical tone. "She looked half dead when we got here."

Viney arched an eyebrow at the witch.

"I didn't graduate from Hexside as the top healer in my year for nothing," she replied. "Once the poison was drawn out from the wound the cut itself was pretty shallow and easy to close up. The real danger was from all the blunt force trauma she had taken, but a few restorative potions and some charms to speed up her body’s own natural healing process did the trick. Humans are surprisingly simple creatures, anatomy-wise. Much easier to treat than witches."

"I'll pass your compliments on to my fellow humans," Luz said dryly.

She sat upright and experimentally moved her arms and legs, noting that they didn't feel any different than they usually did. She grabbed the edge of the tabletop and hopped off.

When her feet hit the ground her left leg shifted under her a little, but she caught the edge of the table again with her hands and steadied herself with only a slight effort. She tested the leg again and found that it could take her full weight with only a faint ache around the outside of her thigh, like the last hint of a fading bruise.

As Luz was testing out her legs, Amity had moved in closer toward her with a nervous look on her face. She glanced back and forth between Luz and Viney again.

"Are you sure that you feel okay, Luz?" Amity asked her. "I can help if you need any support walking."

_ It might be kind of nice to have an excuse to be leaning up close against Amity for a while _ , Luz thought wistfully.

She frowned at herself.

_ No! None of that. I shouldn’t start being creepy to the cute witch who just saved my life. _

"I think I should be fine," Luz said. "Though I am wondering where we are supposed to be walking to right now, exactly."

Amity's brow furrowed in thought.

"I contacted Eda while you were unconscious and told her that Wrath might be coming after her. She said that we should meet her at some sort of safe house that she has as soon as we could," she said. "Do you have any idea where the place she was talking about could be?"

Luz grimaced.

She knew the situation had been bad when she was forced to battle for her life against a pair of crooked witch-cops and a demon controlled with forbidden magic in an abandoned warehouse, but she had no idea that it had gotten  _ that  _ bad.

"I  _ do  _ know the place that Eda was talking about," Luz said. "But I don't think you're going to like it there."

Amity's face took on a puzzled expression.

"I'm pretty sure I’d like getting attacked by Wrath and his thugs again a whole lot less," she said. "Besides, how bad could this place be? Guardians like me have been trained to handle a little rough living on long missions."

Luz sighed.

"Well, if Eda's gone to the place I'm thinking, then the accommodations themselves aren't actually that bad," Luz said. "It's just that the security system can be a little... intense."

"Don’t forget irritating," King added in a grumpy voice. "Just, unbelievably irritating in every possible sense of the word."

Luz saw the skeptical look on Amity's face and shook her head.

"Just… just trust me on this, you'll understand exactly what I mean when you meet him," she said.


	4. Chapter 4

Humans may not have possessed any innate magical abilities of their own, but Amity was finding herself increasingly impressed by how they compensated for it with their technology. Mere minutes after Viney had given Luz a clean bill of health, she had pulled out her phone and summoned a vehicle from someplace called "oober" to transport the group to Eda's safe house, as well as contacted the older witch to let her know that they would be on their way. King and Amity had both donned their disguises so as not to alarm the driver, and Viney had also given King some sort of funnel shaped headgear for dogs to complete the ruse that he had been the patient being treated at her clinic rather than Luz.

Viney had attached the plastic cone around King's neck with an air of great solemnity and told him that their lives may all depend on him wearing it in order to avoid suspicion. The small demon accepted this responsibility with a very regal bearing and assured them all that he would not fail them. Luz had to clear her throat very loudly several times during the exchange, but she had assured him it was because she was overcome with awe at his nobility.

Amity had been nervous when she had stepped into the back seat of the car, since she had never ridden in any sort of human vehicle before. Tales from her fellow Guardians about the horrors of "the bus" had prepared her for the worst, but all in all the experience was quite pleasant. It was certainly much more comfortable than flying on a staff, even if it felt less exhilarating. The sensation of moving very rapidly while somehow also feeling as though she was sitting still was uniquely unnerving though. Luz had to shoot her a warning look and jerk her head toward the driver a few times before Amity realized she should probably try to keep her fascinated reactions about the whole experience to a minimum since an actual human wouldn't have found any of this strange.

Though being driven was obviously much faster than walking, it would still take them some time to travel from Viney's veterinary clinic to the destination address Luz had given the woman from oober. No one seemed to mind the wait though, and Amity was glad for a chance to catch her breath.

She had been so relieved when Luz finally woke up from unconsciousness that it had taken a tremendous effort to not rush over and immediately pull the human into her arms. Even now, Amity found herself glancing toward Luz during the ride several times to reassure herself that she was still alright.

Luz turned her head and caught Amity's eye during one of those completely legitimate health checks that had absolutely nothing at all to do with the way that the gentle curve of the human's lips drew the witch's eye like a magnet. Those lips turned up in a small smile and Amity cursed herself for getting caught looking. She hoped that the subtle illusion disguising her pointed ears would keep Luz from seeing just how flushed they felt.

"What's up?" Luz asked her.

Amity tilted her head back theatrically and stared intently above her.

"No idea, this roof is in the way," she replied, pointedly keeping her eyes away from the grin on Luz's face.

"Okay, now you're just messing with me. I know for a fact that we have that expression in common," Luz said. "Gus uses it all the time."

"Augustus was always an enthusiast for huma... um... your culture," Amity finished lamely.

"What, Cypress culture specifically or just the Washington area in general?" Luz asked.

Amity narrowed her eyes at the human’s snarky tone.

"Oh, you know  _ exactly  _ what I meant," she snipped, but with a playful edge to her voice.

She'd forgotten just how much she had missed the back-and-forth that she used to share with Luz until today. Amity was glad to see that her sense of humor hadn't appeared to have changed much in the years they'd spent apart.

Luz grinned and looked like she was about to reply but at that moment, the small demon seated between them groaned in a very un-doglike way and Amity thought she could hear a very quiet mutter of "spare me" in his whining voice.

The woman driving the car turned her head around and glanced back at them with a puzzled look on her face.

"I've never heard a dog make a noise like that before," she said. "Is he okay?"

"Yeah he's fine, but he just had surgery," Luz interjected quickly. "So he sounds a little different than normal."

"Woof. Woof," King drawled in a bored voice.

The driver turned around again to watch the road, but Amity could see her curious eyes reflected back at them in the small mirror hanging from the roof of the drivers area.

"He's kind of a funny looking little guy isn't he?" the driver said after a pause. "I don't think I've ever seen such a... unique breed."

"Yeah, he's one of a kind alright," Luz said.

"The dog is from Florida," Amity added helpfully, and gave the driver a nervous smile.

"Bark. Bark," King agreed.

"Ah," the driver said in a nonplussed voice. "Well... alright then."

The rest of the ride passed in relative silence until the car pulled up to an extremely dilapidated looking two-story house, located far outside the city-center at the end of a barely paved back-road.

The house didn't resemble a building so much as a crude heap of weathered boards which had a few broken windows lazily jammed in at random intervals to break up the monotony. Skeletal trees raked the sky with their claw-like branches above a weed-choked lawn, and a sign posted outside the rusted chain-link fence informed potential visitors that the building was condemned and not to be entered under any circumstances. Even when framed in the light of the newly risen moon the house still looked more pathetic than spooky though - Amity didn't know if any self respecting ghosts would have bothered to haunt a place like this.

That's  _ the safe house that Eda thought would be secure enough to hold off a potential attack by rogue Guardians and enslaved demonic beasts? _ , Amity thought incredulously. _ It looks like a stiff breeze could knock it over. _

The driver glanced between Luz and the ruin she had just driven her to with a quizzical expression on her face, but seemed to decide that it was better not to ask after how their earlier conversation had gone. They waited until the taillights of the car had receded far into the distance before Luz turned around, performed some sort of complicated looking activity with the rusted chain holding the fence shut and then opened the gate to usher them all inside.

As she passed through the perimeter of the fence, Amity's skin crawled from head to toe for an instant with an uncomfortable squirming sensation, like being briefly dipped into a barrel of hyperactive spiders. Her eyes widened in surprise at the sheer volume of magic she could feel in the air - the only thing she had ever experienced which compared was passing through the great barrier spell which surrounded New Bonesborough.

That enchantment had been cast over the town by an entire group of extremely powerful witches all working together in unison, though. The idea that a similar amount of energy could be centered around this one relatively small area was staggering.

Now that they had passed through the enchantment surrounding the fence, Amity could see that her perception of the house had also changed completely. The crumbling pile of rotted wood had been transformed into a modest but well-kept two story home with circular windows which bore attractive stained glass patterns, and a sharply peaked roof. A winding pathway of white stone slabs ran from the gate all the way to the front porch.

Amity was about to step forward when she felt a tug on her arm, then turned to see that Luz was holding her tightly by the sleeve of her borrowed t-shirt.

"I think you'd better let me go first," she said. "Stay on the blocks as you're walking. Don't step on the lawn - he gets  _ really  _ snippy if you mess up his lawn."

Amity looked around. Unlike the house, the lawn looked just as terrible as it did before they had passed through the illusion - nothing more than a field of dead trees and weeds. It was actually even worse now since Amity could see that it was also pockmarked with random holes and craters the size of dinner plates in every direction.

_ If this is the lawn when it’s not messed up, I don't know what I could do to it that would make it any worse. Even dropping a few fire spells to burn it all down to bare dirt would be an improvement, _ Amity thought to herself.

_ Still, better safe than sorry _ .

She followed Luz up the winding path of stones, careful not to put a foot out of place. There was a cool evening breeze that smelled of pine sap and damp earth rather than the ashy, vehicle-exhaust stink of the atmosphere in the human city. She closed her eyes and drew in a deep lungful of the fresh air, feeling more relaxed than she had been in hours.

“INTRUDER! INTRUDER IN MY TERRITORY!” screeched a high sing-song voice.

Amity’s eyes snapped open, as that brief moment of peace was shattered and she whirled around to try and find the source of the alarm call.

"Hooty, it's just us!" Luz shouted out into the air through cupped hands.

Amity saw a twitching movement in the overgrown weeds out of the corner of her eye moments before the area erupted in a fountain of dirt and shredded plants. A long serpentine shape as thick as the trunk of a small tree thrust its way out from the ground, arching high overhead before it bent down low and angled itself toward Luz.

Rather than the reptilian head Amity had been expecting, the face that was peering at Luz resembled an enormous barn owl carved from wood.

"OH! HIIIIII LUZ! HIIIII KING!" the creature warbled out in a cloying, lilting voice. "EDA ALREADY TOLD ME THAT YOU TWO WOULD BE COMING! GUESS THAT MEANS I DON'T GET TO EAT YOU GUYS TODAY, HA HA!"

"Hah, yeah," King muttered. "That joke never gets old."

The circular owl face rotated around itself a few times and then tilted to look past Luz's shoulder. Amity could  _ feel  _ the empty black pits of its eyes staring into her soul. Her casting fingers twitched unconsciously as a number of attack spells instinctively crowded their way to the forefront of her mind.

"I DON'T KNOW YOUUUUU THOUGH!" the owl-tube crooned out at the top of its lungs as it inched closer toward her.

_ Does it even have lungs? _ , Amity wondered in a mix of fascination and horror.

"Amity is a friend, Hooty," Luz said quickly, angling her head to cut off the line of sight between Hooty and Amity. "Eda told you that she would be coming here with us too, right?"

The owl-tube tilted its face back and forth a few times and then arched over Luz's head to peer down at Amity again from above.

"SHE DIIIID," it admitted in a disappointed voice. "BUT HOW DO I KNOW THAT THIS IS THE SAME PERSON SHE WAS TALKING ABOUT, HMMMM? MAYBE THIS IS A TOTALLY DIFFERENT SNOOTY-LOOKING WITCH WITH GREEN HAIR NAMED AMITY? I SHOULD PROBABLY EAT HER ANYWAY, JUUUUUUST TO BE SURE."

At another time the 'snooty looking' comment might have drawn a protest from Amity, but she was too busy forcing down her fight-or-flight instincts at the moment to care.

"No!" Luz said in a frustrated voice. "Look, there might be a whole bunch of guys coming by later who want to kill us. You can eat them instead, okay?"

Hooty's head snapped from Amity to Luz and its beak stretched opened into a wide, triangular grin that looked utterly unnatural on its birdlike face.

"OH BOY! WHY DIDN'T YOU SAY SO SOONER!" it crooned in its sing-song voice. "A WHOLE BUNCH OF NEW FRIENDS COMING TO VISIT ME - THIS IS GOING TO BE FUUUUUUN! HOOT HOOT!"

The creature's tube shaped body retracted back into the grass with a shocking burst of speed. Amity tracked its progress with her eyes until she saw that its face eventually reeled itself back into the front door where it blended in with the woodgrain like an ornate carving.

"That  _ thing _ wanted to eat me?" Amity asked Luz in a whisper as they continued their walk up the path.

"Um, yes and no," Luz said. "I mean, he doesn't really  _ eat  _ anything since he's a house. Intruders that he swallows just wind up in the basement. Mostly, anyway."

Amity had a grim curiosity about that 'mostly' but decided not to press Luz further on that particular point.

"Oh," she said instead. "Well, what happens when they get to the basement?"

King shuddered.

"He  _ talks  _ to them," the demon said. "For hours - sometimes even days. Eda usually just lets them go once she finds out that he has 'guests visiting' and they don't ever come back again to bother her."

Amity was about to say that didn't sound all that terrible compared to actually being eaten alive until she stopped and considered the sound of the creature's voice.

"Luz, if the bird-tube turns on us, please don't let him take me alive," she said, only half joking.

The interior of the safe-house proved to be fairly cozy, with tall shelves lining the walls that were crowded with a mix of old books and odd magical bric-a-brac as well as a large stone fireplace in the living room that crackled cheerfully. Amity spotted Eda seated in an overstuffed armchair, relaxing in front of the fire with a book in her hands.

The older witch glanced up from her reading and smiled at the sight of Luz, then hustled the three inside and told them to shut the door before they let all the heat out. Luz tossed her messenger bag beside the large couch in the center of the room and then collapsed into the middle cushion with a satisfied groan. King tore the plastic cone off from around his neck, proceeded to stomp it to pieces with his tiny foot and then rushed over to join Luz on the couch, curling up into a circle in the space beside her.

Amity stood in the doorway, feeling out of place and awkward until Luz tilted her head back across the top of the couch and shot the witch a crooked smile.

"C'mon over Amity," she said as she patted the empty cushion on her right side. "There's room for one more."

Amity felt her heart flutter in her chest like a frantic butterfly at the sight of that familiar smile and she tried to shake off the tension that buzzed through her nerves.

_ For Titan's sake, I was threatened by some kind of house-monster just a few minutes ago, so how is the idea of sitting on a couch next to Luz making me this nervous? Did I suddenly turn back into a lovesick teenager when I wasn't paying attention? _ , she chided herself.

Amity gave a small nod and then shuffled over to plop down on the couch beside Luz, sinking deep into the plump cushions with an appreciative groan of her own.

"Comfy, right?" Luz asked.

Amity nodded in mute agreement and took a calming breath. It was still hard to believe that any part of today had been real. The enormity of the events coming one after another was overwhelming... the Hall in an uproar, finding Luz again after so long, the investigation, Wrath's betrayal, Luz nearly dying... it was just too much to process. Amity hadn't felt so adrift and emotionally drained in years.

She stared into the heart of the crackling fire for a few moments and then turned to face Eda.

"What do you think that we should do now?" she asked.

The older witch shut her book again with a snap, apparently annoyed at having her reading interrupted twice in a row. Amity wondered if she was busy doing more of that magical research that Luz had told her about earlier. That was, until she noticed that the cover of the book depicted a rather muscular demon dipping a witch into a passionate kiss.

"What time is it right now, seven?" Eda asked.

"Just about, yeah," Luz answered when she checked her phone.

"Then I think we should probably get some dinner ready. It's been a long day," Eda said, setting her book down on the arm of her chair. "Want to come help out, Luz?"

"Sure, sounds fun," Luz said with a smile.

Amity turned an incredulous stare at the pair.

"Aren't there more important things that we should be discussing right now other than food?" she asked.

"Food sounds pretty important to me - I missed lunch and I’m starving," Eda answered. "Besides, we're sitting in the absolute safest place in the entire city right now, so I think we can afford to relax for a bit."

"SHE'S RIGHT YOU KNOW," a horribly familiar voice called out inches away from Amity's ear. "THERE'S NO PLACE SAFER THAN MEEEEE!"

She yelped in surprise and turned to find Hooty had snaked out from the doorway and was hovering next to the couch.

"Hooty, stop creeping out our new guest," Luz chided the monster.

"WHAAAAT?" Hooty crooned in an offended tone. "I WAS JUST HELPING AMITY FEEL SAFE! NO BAD GUYS CAN COME HERE TO HURT YOU BECAUSE I DON'T LET AAANYOOONE BUT PEOPLE THAT EDA TRUSTS INSIDE ME."

Any thoughts Amity might have been entertaining about eating promptly fled her mind as her stomach twisted with revulsion.

"Ugh,  _ please  _ don't put it that way!" Luz said.

"WHAT? WHAT'S SOOOOO WEIRD ABOUT WHAT I SAID?" Hooty warbled in his sing-song voice. "IT'S TRUUUUE. YOU'RE ALL INSIDE ME RIGHT NOOOOOOW!"

Thankfully, before the grotesque exchange could continue any longer Eda emerged from the kitchen with a broom and whacked the owl-thing smack in the middle of its face.

"Okay, that's enough out of you for now," the older witch said as she drove the beast back out of the living room. "Go play in the yard. Find a squirrel to chase or something."

"YOU KNOW THEY DON'T COME HERE ANYMORE!" Hooty griped sullenly as he melded back into the wood of the door.

There were a few moments of complete silence, and then Amity turned to Luz.

"Luz, I may create abominations, but that thing is an  _ abomination _ ," she said fervently. "What  _ is  _ it?"

"Hey, Hooty is family. Only  _ we _ get to badmouth him," Eda said in a firm voice.

"Family?" Amity said incredulously.

"Practically family anyway," Eda shrugged. "I've raised him ever since he was a chick... well, maybe he was more of a shed really? It's hard to tell what words to use with house demons."

Amity was about to ask more but then decided that the less she knew about Hooty, the happier she would probably be overall. She accepted the statement with a quick nod instead.

"Fine," she said. "Then... do you need any help with dinner?"

* * *

Fortunately, Eda kept a well stocked pantry in her safe-house and between the three of them working together they were able to prepare a decent meal reasonably quickly.

Luz noticed that Amity still seemed unused to human food. The fact that none of the ingredients had tried to fight back after she opened up the various containers had puzzled the witch and Luz couldn't help but find the expressions she made while waiting for a can of peas to attack her utterly adorable.

They ate together around the kitchen table, and as they did Luz and Amity filled Eda in on the full story of the day's events. King chimed in with an occasional observation, but was much more focused on trying to devour every last crumb of food on his plate than on the conversation.

Eda had nodded along, asked Amity some fairly pointed questions about the Guardians that had tried to frame her, and seemed especially infuriated when she learned the details about the enslaved batswine.

"Those giraffe-hearted  _ assholes _ !" Eda growled. "Sigil binding was outlawed even back in the demon realm, and that place wasn't exactly full of smiles and sunshine if you'd believe half the crazy stuff that my parents used to tell me about it."

"Yes, it's awful! That's why we need to let other witches in New Bonesborough know what's going on," Amity insisted. "There's no telling how long they've been planning this or what they are going to do next if they were already willing to stoop to forbidden magic to accomplish their goals."

"As long as you tell the right witches that is," King said as he licked the last bit of gravy clean from his plate. "Otherwise you'll just be walking into the hands of your enemies."

"Well, I haven't been to town in ages so I'm a little out of the loop," Eda said. "Who do you think would be trustworthy?"

The corner's of Amity's mouth turned down in a frown.

"If you'd asked me that this morning I would have said the Guardians were as trustworthy as they come," she said ruefully. "Maybe if we could find a way to contact some of the members of the Council they might be able to do something?"

Eda scoffed.

"Those pompous blowhards are almost as bad as your fellow law-goons, no offense," she said.

"Some taken," Amity said, and then tapped a thoughtful knuckle against her chin. "What about your sister?"

Luz turned to Eda in surprise.

"You have a sister?" she asked.

There was still so much of Eda's past that was a mystery to Luz. She never really spoke much about her life before she had moved to Cypress, but Luz knew that she'd lived among humans longer than she had among her fellow witches and that there had to be a reason for that.

"Ugh, don't remind me," Eda said. "Lily is the  _ worst _ . For all we know, she might even be the ringleader behind all of this. The Guardians didn't have nearly as much power and influence back before she was in charge of them."

Amity shook her head emphatically.

"No, I think we can trust her," she said. "Counselor Clawthorne had been arguing with my commander that you were innocent this morning and then had asked me to try and find the evidence to prove it before I left town for this assignment."

The sharp scowl on Eda's face softened and a surprised note entered her voice.

"Really?  _ Lily  _ said that?" she asked.

"Yes, she did," Amity said firmly. "I don't know what sort of disagreements you two may have had in the past, but I don't believe that she'd be part of any plan that would get you hurt or killed. Not the woman I know anyway."

"You did also get betrayed and sucker punched today by someone else you implicitly trusted, though," King pointed out helpfully.

Luz barely resisted the urge to slap the demon on the back of his bony head for reminding Amity of that painful experience.

_ I'd probably just cut my hands on his horns if I tried anyway _ , she thought.

"Even so," Amity said. "I still think we can trust the Counselor. Do you have the rune code for her scroll? Maybe we can try to contact her right now and see what she can do?"

Eda shook her head.

"I don’t. Lily and I haven't exactly been on speaking terms these last few decades," the older witch said in a dry voice.

Luz could detect an undercurrent of regret beneath Eda's usual biting sarcasm, and her heart went out to her mentor.

"Maybe we could give it a few days to let things settle down and then find a way to sneak a message into town when the Guardians drop their guard... ian-ing?" Luz suggested.

Amity rolled her eyes at the incredibly weak pun, but Luz still felt a rush of triumph in her chest when she saw that the corners of the witch's lovely lips had twitched ever so slightly upwards.

"It's not a bad plan," Eda agreed with a nod. "I know a few weak spots in the barrier that I've used for smuggling. They would be perfect ways to sneak in, and as long as we're letting the heat die down by waiting here in this house we'd be totally invisible to any scrying eyes."

"Smuggling entrances you say," Amity said with a raised eyebrow.

Eda crossed her arms and shot the witch an insolent grin.

"What, are you going to try and arrest me for that while you're hiding out here in my own safe-house?" she asked.

Amity's eyes narrowed but then she shrugged.

"Honestly, after the way today has been going I think I might need to start looking into a career change," she said.

"Maybe there's hope for you yet, Blight," Eda said approvingly.

Luz sat back in her seat and speared another forkful of food as she considered the plan taking shape. All in all, she could think of worse ways to spend the next few days than sharing a cozy house with a beautiful woman who had an excellent taste in young adult fantasy novels.

_ It might be a good way to get to know each other better _ , Luz thought with a hopeful smile.

_ Maybe I could even ask her to show me a little more of that abomination magic that she used earlier. Eda's never mentioned that type of spell before, and it could be a good opportunity to learn a few new glyphs. _

_ And if it means that we might need to spend even  _ more  _ time together to try and figure out the specifics of how her abomination magic interacts with my glyphs then where's the harm in that, right? _

Luz's rosy train of thought was hijacked and sent careening off of a cliff as a voice screeched out from the living room.

"HEY LUUUUUUZ, YOU DIDN'T TELL ME THAT OUR NEW FRIEND IS FAMOUS!"

_ Okay, so we'll also be spending that time together around Hooty which is definitely a mood killer... but they do say that adversity can also bring people closer together _ , Luz thought as she tried desperately to find the silver lining in that very dark, annoying cloud.

_ Wait, what did he just say? _

"What do you mean famous?" Luz called back through the kitchen door.

"SHE'S ALL OVER THE CRYSTAL BALL RIGHT NOW! MUST REAALLLY BE SOMETHING TO BE ABLE TO EAT DINNER WITH A CELEBRITY LIKE THAT," the house demon said in a wheedling tone. "NOT THAT IIIIIII EVER GET INVITED TO DINNER."

"You don't even eat, you monster!" King shouted back as he stood up on his chair and shook his tiny fist back at the living room. "You just chew it up into mush! It's a waste of perfectly good food that could have gone to me instead!"

Luz, Amity and Eda had already risen from their chairs and started to rush to the living room in the middle of the demon's rant.

Hooty had been right - the large crystal ball set in the center of the living room's claw-footed coffee table really did have Amity's face on display with the words "ROGUE WITCH" printed at the bottom in bold red font.

A deep, gravelly voice was speaking over the static image being displayed and Luz felt a chill race up her spine when she recognized that the speaker was the huge purple Guardian she had set on fire earlier that afternoon.

"- acting on the illegal orders of Counselor Lilith Clawthorne, former Guardian Amity Blight attacked two of her fellow Guardians who were attempting to apprehend the Counselor's sister, the Owl Lady. Further investigation has revealed that Counselor Clawthorne has been in cooperation with her sister, as well as other rogue witches from outside of New Bonesborough, for years to overthrow the Council and deliberately expose our existence to the human world -"

"Is that what I've been doing lately?" Eda asked dryly. "You think I would have remembered plotting to overthrow the government."

Both Amity and Luz shushed the older witch, and Amity ran a finger up along the side of the crystal ball to raise the volume.

"- if any citizen knows the current whereabouts of Amity Blight they are to immediately report that information to the Guardians so that she can be brought to justice for her crimes. In light of these events, Commander Kikimora has declared a state of emergency and taken Counselor Clawthorne into custody - the other members of the Council have also been placed under house arrest until the Guardians are able to determine which have remained loyal to our fellow witches and which have joined the Clawthorne sisters’ rebellion. All witches currently living outside of New Bonesborough have three days to return and declare their allegiance - those who do not will be declared rogue witches and hunted down accordingly. In these difficult times, we ask that the citizens of New Bonesborough take comfort in the fact that the Guardians will always be here to protect you from harm.”

The image on the crystal ball briefly flickered in a number of eye-watering colors and then the message started to play once again from the beginning. Eda strode over to the table and shut it off with a quick slap on the top of the orb.

"Well... shit," she said.

"I think we're probably going to have to come up with a new plan," Luz said.

Amity was staring at the darkened crystal ball with a bleak expression on her face.

"What are we supposed to do now?" she asked tonelessly.

Eda directed a fiery glare at her.

"I'll tell you what we're going to do," she said in a voice laced with steel. "We're going to kick down the doors of that little fascist clubhouse you work at and set my sister free."

Amity turned an incredulous look at her.

"So your entire plan, if you can even call it that, is for us to get past the well-patrolled borders of the village and then take on an entire fortress full of battle-trained Guardians by ourselves?" she asked.

"Pretty much," Eda replied.

"I don't like those odds," Amity said in a flat voice.

"Well if you think it's unfair I can try and go a little easy on them," Eda said as she flipped her long grey mane back over her shoulder with an arrogant smile.

Luz couldn't hold back a snort of laughter, despite the grim situation.

Amity looked like she was about to object, but Eda continued speaking.

"Look, kid, they're obviously panicking right now," Eda said. "Whatever their original plan was with the disguised demon and trying to set me up, you must have thrown it off by not following orders and now they’re stuck winging it. Locking up the whole Council all at once and declaring martial law is probably making the witches in town nervous and angry, so most of the Guardians will be busy just trying to keep order in the streets. The best time to act is  _ now  _ while they're still off balance and before they can tighten their grip on the town into a stranglehold."

Amity's eyebrows raised as she considered the grey-haired witch's words.

"That's... that's a really good point," she said.

"Well, apparently I'm some kind of devious revolutionary so tactics like this are right up my alley," Eda said in a dry voice.

"I'm pretty sure you got that plan, almost word for word, from that one show we were watching," King said. "You know, the one with the politics and the swords and all that  _ disgusting  _ human nudity."

"You made fun of me for liking 'boring nerd crap' when I was telling you about  _ The Bladestrife Chronicles _ !" Luz accused Eda in a voice choked with betrayal.

Eda shot King a dirty look, but declined to confirm or deny the source of her plan.

"Even if the plan,  _ wherever  _ it came from, is good," Amity cut in, "I still don't see how a group this small is going to be able to take on that many Guardians at once."

"Well, if we were fighting fair we might be in trouble," Eda admitted. "But fighting is no time for fairness, and I have a few tricks up my sleeve that might make the odds a little more favorable for us."

The older witch snapped her fingers.

"Speaking of which, Luz, I almost forgot to give you this," she said as she grabbed a familiar duffel bag leaning up against the side of her armchair and then tossed it over to her.

Luz caught the bag and then gave a triumphant whoop as she pulled out the rune-carved baseball bat which she kept at Eda's shop for her more difficult customers.

"Oh, I could have really used you earlier today," Luz said as she ran an affectionate hand along the rough, scaly hide wrapped around its grip.

_ I'll probably need to redraw a few more glyphs on it before we go _ , she thought as she examined the wooden body of the bat.

_ It never hurts to be prepared. _

"When do we leave?" Amity asked.

Eda paused to consider the question.

"We'll give it about an hour and then sneak into town when it's darker," she said. "It'll give us enough time to rest and prepare as much as we can, but probably won't be long enough for them to have full control of the situation."

"Okay," Amity nodded in agreement, "Let's get started then."

While Eda and Amity seated themselves by the coffee table to discuss the defenses of the Guardian Hall, Luz flipped through her binder to examine her store of available glyphs and considered how many she should take with her. Bringing the whole binder along seemed too cumbersome since she was already planning on carrying the bat.

She wished, not for the first time, that her particular form of magic didn't come with its various downsides but she bit back on the familiar annoyance and started selecting different colored pages from the binder, folding them up and then stuffing them each into different pockets of her jacket for easier access.

Eda and Amity had ended their strategy session by the time Luz had folded her last glyph paper, and the older witch had gone upstairs to look for any other magical objects she had on hand that might prove useful.

Luz was suddenly aware that for the first time since King had revealed his presence during their investigation, she and Amity had been left alone together. She knew that most of the nervousness she felt bubbling up in her chest was caused by the fact that she was going to be rushing into a host of unknown dangers pretty soon, but she couldn't deny that at least a small part of it was also coming from the feel of those amber-gold eyes staring in her direction from across the room.

Ever since she had woken up in Viney's clinic, Luz noticed that Amity had seemed to be looking her way fairly often and, every time she did, something about the sight of those eyes glancing at her would tug strangely at the back of Luz’s mind. It was almost like the nagging sensation of  _ deja vu _ , but much more pleasant in a way that she couldn't quite describe. The cynical part of her brain was telling her that the soft looks Amity was directing at her were all out of concern that she'd end up injured again and needing to be rescued, and had nothing in common with the inexplicably intense infatuation that Luz had been feeling ever since she had first laid eyes on the witch.

_ Well, even if that's the case it means that she doesn't want to see me get hurt, at least _ , Luz thought.

_ It may not be  _ exactly  _ the same as love at first sight, but it's a start I guess. _

Luz turned toward Amity and caught the witch's eyes with her own, and noticed that she looked a little nervous herself.

_ Of course she's nervous, we're both about to go rushing into a war-zone _ , Luz chided herself.

_ Ah! She's still looking this way... quick, say something clever and charming! _

"Hell of a day, huh?" Luz said, and offered the witch a weak smile.

_ Fuck! _

To Luz's relief, Amity responded with a bubbling laugh and nodded in agreement.

"It certainly has been full of surprises," she said.

"Might have been better if we'd both just stayed in bed and called in sick or something," Luz said.

"Probably," Amity agreed, giving Luz a small smile. "I don't think I'll get a chance to use any of my sick days at this point since my boss is planning to have me arrested on sight."

"Though, if we  _ had _ stayed home today then we wouldn't be able to foil this whole evil plot thing going on right now, of course," Luz pointed out.

"Very true," Amity said. "We can't just spend the whole day sleeping when there are evil plots that need foiling."

"And, evil plots aside," Luz said in an unexpected rush of boldness, "If I had stayed home from work today then I wouldn't have had the chance to meet you, and that would have been a real shame."

This time Luz was  _ sure  _ that she wasn't imagining the hint of a blush that bloomed across Amity's cheeks at her comment.

"I'm... I'm very happy that I was able to spend time with you today too, Luz," she said.

Luz's heart soared in her chest.

_ Should I try to ask her out now or is this terrible timing? What's the proper etiquette for pre-rescue mission flirting? _ , Luz wondered.

King burst into the room then, dragging an enormous axe behind him while gasping out a litany of grunts and muffled curses.

“When do we leave?” the little demon panted as he unsuccessfully attempted to heft the oversized weapon over his narrow shoulder. “It’s been ages since I’ve engaged in combat against worthy foes and my axe thirsts for blood!”

_ Yup, terrible timing. _

“Sorry King,” Eda called out as she descended the staircase. “We need you here to help Hooty guard the house from intruders. Also, your tiny legs would only slow us down.”

Hooty snaked into the room with a wide grin on his face at Eda’s announcement and nuzzled up against King's head with the hollow click of wood knocking against bone.

“WE’RE GOING TO HAVE OURSELVES A REEEEAAAAL BOYS’ NIGHT TOGETHER!” the house demon declared. “IT’S JUST GOING TO BE YOU AND ME! KING AND HOOTY, HOOTY AND KING, BEST BUDS! IT’LL BE GREEEAAAAT! WAIT HERE, I'M GOING TO GO FIND MY BOARD GAMES!”

King turned a baleful stare upon Eda as Hooty snaked away deeper into the house, and his normally shrill voice shifted into a much lower pitch.

“One day, I will regain my crown, and my throne and all of the awesome and terrible powers that have been denied to me during my long banishment,” the demon proclaimed. “And when that day comes there will be a reckoning for this Edalyn Clawthorne!”

“Play nice and I’ll bring you back some of those chips you like when we’re all done,” Eda promised. 

“Ooo, make sure to get the family sized bag!” King demanded in a much more normal tone of voice.

_ I need to do everything in my power to survive whatever comes next _ , Luz thought to herself.

_ Because I can't allow  _ that  _ to be one of the last conversations that I ever heard in my life. _

* * *

The smuggling routes which Eda had spoken of proved to be just as useful as she claimed, and they were able to sneak past the barrier spell under the cover of darkness without being spotted.

They moved as stealthily as possible, using Amity's knowledge of the Guardian patrol routes to avoid the areas with the heaviest traffic. Amity noticed that several of the mansions they passed as they neared the outskirts of New Bonesborough, which belonged to prominent Counselors, had Guardians posted outside their doors to enforce the house arrest order that Inquisitor Wrath had announced in the crystal broadcast.

Considering the fact that most of the Council was composed of extremely powerful witches, Amity was surprised that they had managed to contain them at all.

_ The Guardians must have taken them all by surprise at the same time so that none could warn the others _ , she thought to herself.

Amity may have never been especially skilled at oracle magic, but a grim premonition crossed her mind at that moment.

_ I wonder how many of the strongest Counselors are coincidentally going to wind up being 'secret rebels' and thrown in the dungeons alongside Lilith? _

The rescue party tried to stick to the shadows as much as possible as they moved in closer toward the heart of the town. The cobbled streets were largely empty, despite the fact that many of the residents of New Bonesborough were nocturnal either by nature or preference, and the normally raucous noise of the Night Market had been subdued by the sounds of a Guardian patrol marching through the square.

Amity’s muscles tensed as the group of white cloaked witches and demons crossed directly in front of them. She looked right into the face of the tall Guardian leading the group, who she vaguely recognized as a member of the Inquisitions department, but all four of the demon's eyes seemed to slide around Amity as if she didn't exist and they moved past one another without incident.

She released the breath she had been unconsciously holding and a shiver of relief trembled its way through her limbs.

"See, I told you there was nothing to worry about," Eda whispered to Amity once the Guardians were well out of earshot.

"I guess you were right," Amity admitted.

"Lucky thing that we were brewing up some vanishing cream today before you showed up," Luz said.

"What exactly had you originally been planning to use this much invisibility potion for anyway?" Amity asked Eda.

"Perfectly legitimate reasons, of course," Eda said in a neutral tone. "She's got a suspicious mind, doesn't she?" she added to Luz.

"Yeah, you really need to learn to be more trusting of people, Amity," Luz chided her in a gently teasing tone.

Amity heaved a sigh and decided to drop the matter. She supposed she should just be grateful that Eda's reputation as an alchemist was well deserved. The rare ointment smeared on Amity's face and hands (as well as Luz's and Eda's) rendered them undetectable by anyone that wasn't also currently wearing potion brewed from the exact same batch on their skin.

The fact that this particular potion was infamous for its association with gangs of thieves and teams of assassins meant that it was also explicitly banned in New Bonesborough, but so was practically everything else that Amity was doing tonight, so she chose to ignore that technicality.

As they made their way through town Amity noticed the way Luz's eyes darted around to devour the scenery. The added protection which the invisibility potion granted them had allowed Luz to stare to her heart's content at all of the new sights, with open excitement on her face.

"Amity, your town is so  _ incredible _ ," Luz breathed quietly as a wide grin spread across her lips.

Amity's heart jumped and she barely suppressed a startled squeak when Luz reached out to grab her hand for attention and then pointed at a nearby building.

"What's that place?" she asked with barely suppressed excitement in her voice. "It looks like it's some sort of sacred temple filled with magic and wonder."

"That's the library," Amity said.

"Ah, so I was right then," Luz said, and then pointed at a different building. "How about that one? All the weird colored smoke pouring from the chimney has me thinking it's probably an alchemy lab, right?"

"That's a café," Amity said. "They do pretty good cookies, but their tea is always too weak for my taste."

"Oh... well, how about the sinister looking building over there covered in all the skulls?" Luz said. "Is it like a necromancer's lair or something?"

"I think that's a daycare center actually," Amity said.

"Hey, dum-dums, we're supposed to be on a secret mission here, not a sightseeing trip," Eda hissed. "We may be invisible, but people can still  _ hear  _ us."

"Oh, right," Luz said as her warm brown skin darkened with a blush. "Sorry Eda."

Amity's hand felt depressingly cold when Luz released her grip and went back to her silent-and-sneaky mode rather than excitable-tourist mode.

_ Maybe if we can pull off this absolutely insane plan, I could take Luz around to properly see the town _ , Amity speculated.

_ Not like, as a date or anything of course... but just because I think it would be something that she'd really love to do. It could just be my way to thank her for saving my life, not to mention everything else she's done for me today... _

_ Though even if we  _ do  _ all manage to come out of this alive, there's still the fact that a human like Luz is forbidden to even set foot in New Bonesborough, so maybe this whole line of thinking is just a pathetic waste of time. _

As they crossed the familiar bend in the streets Amity could see the tall, ivy-covered walls of the Guardian Hall rising up in the distance, though something seemed off about them. Her mouth went dry when she realized that this was because the emergency beacon at the top of the central tower had been lit for the first time in her life. The beacon's enormous red light spell orb bathed the Hall's white marble walls with its blood colored glow and cast eerie shadows in every direction.

"We're here," Amity whispered.

" _ That's _ where you work?" Luz hissed to Amity. "And you  _ really  _ had no idea that they were the bad guys until now?"

"It doesn't normally look like this!" Amity objected.

The outer perimeter of the Hall was only lightly patrolled by a handful of Guardians moving listlessly back and forth. Amity was surprised at first, but she reasoned that Eda must have been right - their forces were stretched thin in their attempt to occupy the town. Even if they had called in every off-duty Guardian there still wouldn't be enough of them to patrol the perimeter of the barrier, lock down the entire town and fully staff the Hall all at once.

Amity could easily imagine a few of her friendlier co-workers grumbling about the mandatory overtime in the breakroom between shifts, and the thought caused her gut to twist in frustration.

She couldn't have been the only Guardian who wasn't in on the plan, could she? How many of the people that she'd trained with and trusted with her life had been plotting this nightmare behind her back? How many of them weren't actually involved in the plan, but were still blindly following their superiors’ orders and crushing down any doubts they might have had about how right or wrong those orders were?

If she hadn't found out the truth earlier, would she have been one of those obedient Guardians marching through the streets right now, or would she have had the courage to take a stand?

Amity shook the doubts from her mind. What mattered was that she  _ was  _ here now, and she was going to do everything in her power to make sure that her home would be protected from whatever Wrath and Kikimora had been plotting.

Invisible or not, they had all agreed that going in through the main entrance to the Hall was too much of a risk. Fortunately, Amity knew of a few hidden side entrances that were normally only used in emergencies.

She took the lead, with Luz and Eda following closely behind her as they skirted the edges of the wall to find the specific lock-stone built into it that would allow them to enter the building. It took them a little time, since Amity had only really been shown the secret passageways during her first day orientation and then had just used the front door like everyone else, but eventually the correct stone revealed itself and they were able to slip through the wall.

Amity’s nerves crackled with tension as she guided them through the familiar curving hallways and twisting passages of the Hall. She had never seen it look so empty before. The usual bustle of Guardians going about their tasks and preparing for missions was replaced by the sight of a few lone stragglers wandering the Hall, who looked almost as lost and confused as she felt. Clearly this sudden takeover hadn't only taken the witches in town by surprise.

Once Amity had gotten her bearings, she began to lead Luz and Eda in the direction of the dungeons where prisoners were kept as they awaited trial before the Council.

Her heart was pounding harder with each step she took that brought her closer to the massive iron-banded doors leading down to the cells. During the entire history of the Hall there had never been a successful escape attempt from the dungeons. To make matters worse, Lilith was likely being held in one of the most heavily-warded cells: the kind that were layered with so many different types of anti-magic rune that even summoning enough power to light a candle was impossible within their walls.

Still, there had already been plenty of things that had happened today that Amity would have thought of as impossible before, so maybe the situation wasn't quite as hopeless as she feared.

When they reached the correct hallway, Amity saw that only a single pair of Guardians were standing outside of the door that led down to the dungeons. The two white-cloaked figures were leaning against the wall and talking with each other in low, tense voices.

_ Okay, we just need to find a way to incapacitate the guards, get down the stairs, take the keys from the gate warden and then free Counselor Clawthorne _ , Amity thought as she tip-toed down the passage toward the guards.

_ As long as we do everything exactly as we planned then the risks should be pretty low. _

Of course, it was never going to be that simple.

Amity, Luz and Eda were halfway down the hallway when the pair of chatting Guardians looked up with puzzled expressions on their faces and began squinting in their direction. The large red eyes of the taller Guardian suddenly widened in surprise and they raised their hand to cast a spell. 

Unfortunately for them, Eda was faster.

A shimmering cloud of golden dust flung from the older witch’s hand swirled swiftly through the air and enveloped the faces of both guards. The pair sighed out in identical, long breaths and then collapsed to the floor without another sound.

Eda saw the surprised looks on Amity and Luz’s faces and gave them a reassuring grin.

“Relax, that was just some sleep sand,” she said. “They’ll wake up in a day or two with a real bastard of a headache, but no harm otherwise.”

“What just happened?” Amity hissed at Eda. “I thought this potion was supposed to keep us invisible all night long? I’m pretty sure those guys could see us right now!”

Eda frowned and pulled out the flask of invisibility potion from her hair (how did she  _ do  _ that?). Amity saw that the cream colored ointment which she had applied to her skin earlier had turned black as ink within the flask and was bubbling ominously.

“Well, normally it does last a lot longer than this, but I had to make a few substitutions to the standard formula and I guess that means the whole batch has gone  _ pfffft _ ,” she said, punctuating the sentence with an annoyed raspberry.

Luz groaned and turned an exasperated glare at her mentor.

“ _ Please  _ tell me that you didn’t do the potato thing?” she said.

“Well, I wouldn’t have  _ had to _ if there hadn’t been a Titan-cursed abomination watching me all day that wouldn’t let me leave my shop to go buy some actual mandrake roots,” Eda protested.

“What are we supposed to do now? Our whole escape plan relied on being invisible!” Amity hissed.

“We improvise,” Eda said as she bent down to yank a white cloak off of one of the unconscious Guardians, fastened it around her shoulders and then raised the cowl over her face. “Luz, grab the other one and pull the hood up tight - those funny little ears of yours are a dead giveaway.”

“That isn’t going to work for very long,” Amity insisted.

“It only has to work long enough for us to free Lily,” Eda said in a firm voice. “Put your hands behind your back and pretend you’ve been cuffed - Luz and I are now the heroes that just captured the rogue witch Amity Blight and we’re taking her downstairs to rot in a cell.”

Amity nodded along with the plan, and tucked her hands behind her back. Luz stepped up close behind her and tugged the cowl of her new white cloak up over her head. A memory rose unbidden in Amity’s mind of Luz wearing that silly cat-eared hoodie she loved so much on a beautiful summer day. She wondered how Luz would react now if she were to suddenly pull her new hood down to cover her face up.

“Hey, what’s with the smile?” Luz whispered to her. “You’re supposed to be a prisoner right now.”

Amity shook the clouds from her head.

“Sorry, I'm just a little distracted,” she said.

“Well don’t worry,” Luz assured her, “No matter what happens next, I’ll be here to watch your back.”

"I'll watch out for you too," Amity replied. "And this time I really won't let anything happen to you."

Luz gave her a gentle smirk.

"Keep talking like that and I might think you actually like having me around or something," the human teased.

"Who ever said I didn't?" Amity whispered back.

Eda motioned for the two to be quiet and follow after her as she opened the door and took the lead down the dungeon stairwell.

It was cramped and narrow on the way down, and the air grew damp and chilly the further they went. Sconces equipped with light orbs were set at regular intervals along the wall to break up the claustrophobic darkness pressing in around them with small islands of cold white light.

At the foot of the stairs there was a gate of thick iron bars, guarded by a single squat demon standing at the ready with a bored look on his face. He glanced up as they approached, and his eyes widened at the sight of Amity being led between Luz and Eda with her eyes downcast and her hair artfully disheveled.

"One for the dungeons," Eda said in a gruff voice.

The short Guardian grinned to reveal a mouthful of yellowed fangs.

"About time too," he said. "Wrath was  _ very _ interested in getting this one."

The Guardian pulled a keyring from his belt and unlocked the gate, then pulled it open to allow the three to pass inside.

"Where should we put this traitor?" Eda asked.

The Guardian pointed a clawed finger toward the hallway that led off to the right.

"Maximum security wing, along with her 'leader'," he said. "We need to make sure they both stay contained for now."

A coldness swept over Amity at his tone of voice.

"What do you mean for now?" she asked.

The Guardian turned to Amity and gave her a smile brimming with false sympathy.

"Well, I'm no oracle, but I think you and the Counselor are both going to be so overcome with guilt for the crimes you committed against witch-kind that you'll take your own lives before your trials start," he told her. "We wouldn't want any of your false testimony to confuse the citizens about what really happened."

"That's good to know," Eda said in a cold voice.

The gloating Guardian barely had time to look her way before her binding spell had enveloped him from head to foot in chains and sent him toppling to the floor with a yelp of surprise.

Luz's bat came down hard on the demon's head with a dull THUNK before he could raise any further alarm, and he ceased struggling at once. The human bent down to grab the keys from his hand, and then hesitantly touched her fingers to his throat.

"Is he alive?" Amity asked.

Luz nodded as she stood back up.

"Yeah," she said with evident relief in her voice.

"How many more guards do they keep down here?" Eda asked.

"Normally just one or two to patrol the cells," Amity replied.

"Perfect, then let's find Lily and get out of here already," she said as she stalked off down the hall toward the maximum security wing.

They encountered the second guard right before they reached the Counselor's cell, but this time they didn't bother with attempting to fool them. Instead, Luz pulled a green glyph paper from beneath her cloak and ensnared the startled witch with a wrist-thick vine as she raised a hand to greet them.

Eda looked over the trussed up Guardian and then gave the human a nod of approval.

"You're getting a lot better at using that spell," she said. "I remember back when all you could do with it was make flowers."

Luz held up a finger, then after a moment's pause she pointed at the cocooned Guardian. Small buds sprouted along the length of the vine and the restrained witch was soon festooned with a number of blue blossoms.

She gave Eda a cocky grin.

"Nobody likes a showoff, kid," the witch grumbled.

"I learned from the best," Luz declared.

Lilith's cell was the very last one in the hallway, with three special rune-locks set in place over the thick metal door. It didn't take long to find the matching keys on the keyring, since they were the only ones that were glowing the same ominous colors as the locks.

When the door was unbolted, Amity saw that the Counselor was seated on the hard cot and facing toward the stone wall away from them.

"Is that you, Kiki?" she asked in a bitterly cold voice. "Have you finally come down to gloat and explain your plan to me like the villain in a cheap opera? Or is this the part where you kill me while I'm helpless in this cage, because you know that you’d never have the courage to face me in a real fight?"

"Nice speech," Eda said in a dry voice. "Did it take you long to think it up?"

Lilith spun around with a look of absolute shock on her face.

"Sister?" she said in a whisper. "Edalyn! Is it really you?"

"Do you know anyone else that looks this gorgeous?" Eda asked with a sharp grin.

The Counselor stood up and walked slowly toward the open doorway. Her face was in shadow in the dimly lit cell, but Amity could still see a wet gleam in her ice blue eyes.

"How… and… and  _ why _ ?" she asked. "I never imagined that you'd come for me."

Eda's playful grin fell away from her face, but the hard line of her mouth that replaced it seemed much more genuine to Amity.

"Then maybe you don't know me as well as you thought," she answered. "You're still my sister… I figured that should matter to at least one of us."

Lilith's face crumpled as though she had been struck.

"Edalyn, I-," she began.

"Save it for later, whatever it is," Eda snapped. "Right now we need to get out of here. There could be more guards coming along any minute now."

When the Counselor stepped out from the confines of the cell she stood up a little straighter as the runes binding her magic released their grip on her body.

"Where are we going, Edalyn?" she asked.

"Far away from here," Eda answered. "The new jerks in charge want you and Amity dead, and I don't imagine that they would be much nicer to me and Luz either."

"Who is Luz?" Lilith asked.

Amity's eyes widened.

_ Oh Titan, I hadn't even considered this! _ , she thought.

Before the witch could try to give the human some kind of signal to lie low, Luz had pulled the white cowl back over her head and beamed a smile at the Counselor.

"Luz Noceda, pleasure to meet you!" she said in a chipper voice. "Do you have any embarrassing childhood stories about Eda that you'd be willing to share with me later?"

Lilith's eyes practically bugged from their sockets as she glanced back and forth between Luz, Eda and Amity.

"A human? What's a human doing here?" she asked the other witches.

A sour frown replaced the smile on Luz's face.

"She's helping them rescue your ungrateful ass," Luz snapped. "And it's Luz, not 'human', thank you very much."

Lilith sputtered and looked like she was about to say something, but Eda quickly cut her off.

"You can freak out about all of this later, Lily. Right now we need to move," she said. "The faster we leave here, the better chance we'll have of making it safely outside the barrier before they start sending out the hunting parties."

" _ Leave _ ? You want me to leave New Bonesborough in the hands of these thugs?" Lilith said, drawing herself up to her full height. "We have to stop them, Edalyn!"

Eda narrowed her eyes.

"I came here to rescue my sister, not die fighting an army of her old friends," she said.

Lilith shook her head.

"I'm a Counselor, Edalyn. Protecting this community is my responsibility, and I cannot abandon my people just to save my own life," she said.

"Well I don't have to risk mine to save the people that abandoned  _ me _ !" Eda snarled.

Lilith swallowed back whatever she was going to say and then nodded once.

"You're right of course," she said. "Thank you for setting me free, Edalyn. If you three go now you can probably escape without being seen… but I need to stay here and at least try to stop this madness if I can."

Amity glanced back and forth between the sisters as they locked eyes in a stare with one another.

"I'll come with you, Counselor," Amity blurted out. "This is my home too, you know."

Lilith turned to Amity in surprise, but then nodded.

"I would certainly appreciate the help, Amity," Lilith said with a small smile. "I think, given the circumstances, you really should just start calling me Lilith now, though."

"If Amity's staying then so am I," Luz declared as she stepped forward and placed a firm hand on Amity's shoulder.

"Luz, you don't have to do this," Amity said, as she turned to look the taller woman in the eye. "You need to go - you already almost died once helping me today."

"And I'd do it again in a heartbeat," Luz declared.

"You'd risk your life for someone you've known for a few hours?" Amity asked with a forced harshness in her voice.

"Not just someone," Luz said as she shook her head. "For  _ you _ ."

The look of sincerity in Luz's eyes was almost more than Amity could stand. The thorn of guilt that had been digging into the witch's heart ever since she had set eyes on the human,  _ her _ human, fell away. She wanted to throw her arms around Luz's neck and press those soft lips against her own until she had kissed away all of the lost, lonely years they should have shared together.

"Ugh,  _ fine _ !" Eda sighed. "I'll stay and stop this stupid coup with you, Lily. But only to make sure that this lovesick moron doesn't get herself killed."

"I am not a moron!" Amity snapped.

"I was talking about Luz," Eda said.

Amity felt her face flush scarlet as Luz turned toward her with a speculative look in her eyes.

"Ah," she mumbled. "Of course you were."

_ Maybe if I'm very lucky, Wrath will slice me in half in a few minutes and I won't have to live with this humiliation for very long. _

Lilith glanced between the three.

"Well, I will freely admit that you've always been the more powerful of us, sister, and Amity is a highly skilled witch in her own right…" Lilith began, "but what exactly can  _ you _ do hum-,  _ Luz _ ?"

Amity saw the gleam that came into Luz's eye as she tossed her bat in the air, caught it by the handle and then ignited its body in an aura of crackling green flames.

"More than you might think," she said with a grin.

* * *

Things were going better than expected.

Of course, Luz had sort of expected to either be captured or dead by this point, so that was a pretty low bar.

Their luck had lasted for nearly five minutes after they freed Eda's rude, goth-looking sister from her cell, but no sooner had they emerged from the door leading out of the dungeon than they ran straight into a pair of Guardians who had probably been sent to trade shifts with the ones that Eda had sleep-dusted.

Lilith had managed to capture one of them in a bubble of orange energy and send them flying out the nearby window with a startled scream, but the second had used some sort of speed enhancing magic to escape before anyone could stop them.

The howl of alarm bells had split the air not long after that.

"We need to find and capture Kikimora and Wrath," Lilith had declared. "They're the leaders, and if we cut off the basilisk's head the body will shrivel up and die."

"Then we should head toward the central command tower since it's the most heavily fortified part of the Hall," Amity said as she traced a large spell-circle in the air to summon up a pair of abominations.

"Sounds like the kind of place where they'd be hiding while they let their lackeys do the dirty work for them," Eda agreed.

Luz choked up her grip on the flaming bat, wishing she had a witty one liner or off-hand bit of tactical brilliance to add to the conversation.

But real life wasn't like the movies, and right now all she was feeling was the taste of acid in the back of her throat as she fought down the stress that threatened to overwhelm her. Her apprenticeship with Eda had put Luz in some pretty risky situations before, but nothing compared to this.

She glanced at Amity out of the corner of her eye, watching the witch issue sharp commands to the two lavender colored slime monsters she had just pulled out of thin air, and wondered how she had ever thought a woman like her would need the help of someone with pockets full of magic paper and a flaming stick.

_ Did I really think I could rush in and save the day like some epic hero out of a fantasy story with my one year of training, when she's been doing this stuff her whole life? _

She grit her teeth and fought down the familiar surge of negativity as they retracted their steps away from the dungeon hall.

_ Focus, Noceda! Remember, you  _ are _ a real witch! I took out a wild demon today, so this is no time to start doubting myself! _

_ Let’s not think too hard about the fact that the demon also almost killed me and the only reason I’m still alive right now is because I’m friends with a damn good vet. _

_ Oh god, I almost died today already and now I’m rushing into something that’s probably way more dangerous. At least this time Eda’s with me too - there is nothing  _ she  _ can’t handle! _

_ Okay, Luz, time to get your game face on! So what if I’m trapped in a prison full of hostile assholes who hate my guts? I did that for four whole years in high school - this is nothing! I promised Amity that I was going to help her, and that’s what I’m going to do! _

Then they turned the corner in the hallway and came face to face with a large group of Guardians, and suddenly Luz had no more time for thinking.

The next few moments were a blur of pure chaos as everyone exploded into motion at once.

Luz only caught glimpses and flashes of the action as she ducked to avoid a beam of malevolent energy.

A blur of purple flew by as one of Amity's abominations threw its own head at a green skinned Guardian, who screamed when the slimy mouth clamped over his arm with a crunch.

She heard a hollow, glassy noise as a wave of attack spells bounced off of a shield which Lilith had conjured just in the nick of time.

A looming white shape drew her eye as a wolf-headed Guardian charged toward Luz with their fangs bared. She planted her feet and swung from the shoulders, catching them with the sweet spot of the fiery bat right in the gut. The Guardian doubled over with an inhuman yelp, and Luz slapped a freshly-activated blue glyph paper onto their back. A gust of frigid air blew Luz's hair back as the rapidly expanding column of ice completely encased the stunned Guardian in seconds.

At this point Luz couldn't tell if she was sickened at the thought that she may have just killed someone, or relieved that they had finally stopped moving within their frozen prison.

A blast of fuchsia colored flames roared by Luz's head and she turned to see it strike a witch who had been rushing toward her while she was busy freezing their partner. The witch fled back down the hallway with their cloak ablaze, screaming in panic. 

When Luz turned to thank Amity for the save, she only had a split second to draw a green glyph paper from her pocket and use its conjured vines to ensnare the Guardian who had moved in behind the amber-eyed witch while she was distracted rescuing Luz.

Amity flashed a warm smile at Luz and then her nearest abomination picked up the vine-wrapped Guardian and hurled him at the last three enemies still standing.

The final group of Guardians had been desperately attempting to defend themselves against Eda's attacks with a large shield spell they had conjured together, but it collapsed with a popping sound when the abomination-propelled Guardian slammed against it. As the spell failed the energy backlash sent its three casters toppling to the ground in a twitching heap.

Eda drew a swift spell circle onto the stone wall beside her with both hands, and an enormous owl face thrust out from the rock looking for all the world like Hooty's bigger, even more horrifying brother. The giant bird-creature snaked out past Eda, and then began to swallow fallen Guardians one after another down its beak. Once the final Guardian had been devoured the owl-thing made a deep hooting noise that rattled the hallway’s stained glass windows in their frames and then melded itself back into the stone as though it had never existed at all.

Luz shot Eda a horrified look, but couldn't stop herself from asking.

"What did it do with them?" she asked. "Are they all trapped forever inside the walls now?"

Eda grimaced.

"What? No!" she said. "Titan, you've got a morbid mind... I just had it carry them downstairs and barf them all up in that cell we found Lily in. I figured that place would be strong enough to keep them contained until we could figure out what to do with them later."

Luz breathed out a sigh of relief.

Eda turned to the others.

"We took care of those guys easily enough," she said. "But even I can't keep this up all night. Are we getting close to that command tower you were talking about yet?"

Amity glanced around the hallway and her nose scrunched up in thought.

"Yes, I think we're not far from a back entrance to the tower. It'll probably be guarded, but it's still safer than trying to enter through the main lobby where we could be surrounded," Amity replied.

"I know the route you're talking about," Lilith said.

"Not surprising since it used to be your office," Eda interrupted dryly.

Lilith shot her sister a glare.

"As I was saying,  _ Edalyn _ , I also know the way in so I should take the lead from here," Lilith continued. "There are a few secret defenses built into those areas that I know how to bypass."

Eda had no objections to the plan, and the group set off at high speed since they had already lost the element of surprise.

Luz's perception of time slipped completely from her grasp as she ran down the maze-like halls of the building alongside the three witches. They encountered other unlucky Guardians along the way, either alone or in small groups of two or three, but scattered as they were they weren't able to put up a serious resistance against the four-woman-army charging toward them.

That still didn't stop Luz's heart from lodging itself in her throat as she barely managed to avoid being burned, frozen, zapped or (on one horrifying occasion)  _ melted  _ by the attack spells that their opponents had hurled her way before they were taken down and sent to join their companions in the dungeon below by the horrible thing Eda summoned which Luz had dubbed 'Big Hooty' in her mind.

She had lost count at this point of just how many of these brushes with death she'd experienced. After the first few times they all just seemed to blur together. Her left leg was starting to ache more the longer they ran, and she hoped that whatever magic Viney had used to close up the wound wouldn't come undone from all the strain she was putting on it.

Luz could see she wasn't the only one feeling the worse for wear: Lilith was moving with a noticeable limp from a stray blast of electric power that had arced around her shield, and Amity was down to only one abomination since the other had been reduced to ash when it had shielded its master from an extremely powerful fire spell. The scent of smoke clung to the witch's clothes, tickling the back of Luz's nose whenever she drew near, and something about that smell set her teeth on edge.

They eventually passed through a door sealed with a number of disquietingly glowing runes that Lilith was able to unlock, and it led into a much grander looking hallway than any of the ones they had been travelling through before. Lilith informed them all that they had finally arrived and that the tower entrance was just up ahead.

Luz was both overjoyed and apprehensive. She wasn't sure how much longer she could have kept up this pace, and her pockets were starting to run perilously low on glyphs after their last few encounters. She was anxious to see an end to this situation. However, she also didn’t expect that the resistance they faced was likely to  _ decrease  _ the closer they were to the ringleaders.

The walls of the new hallway were lined with ornate tapestries that shimmered with the gleam of golden thread, and the floor was covered with a thick, wine red carpet, rather than the cold, bare flagstones of the other halls they had passed through. At another time Luz would have loved to examine the intricate wall hangings and stop to make a few sketches of some of the fascinating figures depicted in them, but a small crowd of white-cloaked witches and demons was currently pouring out from the large double doors at the end of the hall and blocking their path forward.

At the head of the group marched a blue-haired witch with a thick cloth bandage wrapped around his forehead and a surly expression twisting his face. Luz instantly recognized him as the sneering witch from the factory that had been gloating at Amity while she was tied up, and the fear and exhaustion she had been feeling were blown out of her mind by an invigorating surge of anger. The blue haired witch apparently recognized her too, because his own expression shifted to surprise and then rage when he spotted Luz.

"You!" he shouted, pointing a claw-tipped finger straight at her.

_ Gosh, I'm just making so many new friends today _ , she thought.

The enraged witch's pointing fingertip began to glow crimson as he traced out a spell-circle which sent a hissing orb of red flame racing down the long hallway. Luz could already tell that it was going to go wide off toward her right and miss her, but she realized that meant it was going straight toward Eda instead.

At that point rational thought went right out the window and Luz's instincts took over.

She stepped into the swing, and at the instant of contact she felt the surge of wild energy traveling along the rune-carved body of the bat and shivering its way up through her bones. It was a  _ very  _ strong spell.

But this bat had been made to withstand fire. To control it.

And after all of the practice that Eda had forced her to do, Luz Noceda had gotten  _ very  _ good at controlling fire.

In a split-second the green flames that burned along the body of the bat had devoured the crimson energy of the Guardian's spell in a blaze of crackling light.

As Luz completed the arc of her swing an even larger ball of pure green fire rocketed back down the hallway with an ear splitting shriek, setting the nearby tapestries ablaze with the heat of its passage. The fireball struck, hard, against the double-doors at the end of the hall and then exploded into an enormous cloud of emerald flames and tooth rattling noise. The ornately carved doors were shattered into hundreds of jagged splinters from the force of the impact, and the blazing wave of green flame that followed blew the massed Guardians off their feet and sent them tumbling down onto their faces in a symphony of shouts, groans and curses.

Luz blinked, once, at the scene of utter devastation before her.

_ Holy shit, I can’t believe that I actually  _ did  _ that. _

_ I can't believe that actually  _ worked  _ either. How am I not dead? _

"Nice work kid!" Eda crowed, slapping Luz on the back. "I taught her everything she knows," she added in a smug aside to Lilith, who was staring at Luz as if she had just grown a second head.

A light touch on Luz's wrist jerked her out of her stunned reverie and she turned to find Amity staring up at her with a mix of surprise and what almost looked like admiration on her face.

"Luz that was  _ incredible _ ! How in the Titan's name did you  _ do  _ that?" the witch asked in a breathless voice.

"I um… I don't know... I liked playing softball a lot in P.E. and that just felt natural I guess," Luz said with a helpless shrug.

_ Wow, that sounds even dumber when I actually say it out loud, doesn’t it? _

Amity, apparently, didn't find the explanation to be that dumb. Luz wondered if she was just being kind or if it was because the witch might not actually know what 'softball' or 'P.E.' meant.

Lilith and Eda had quickly set to work binding and trapping the fallen Guardians, or at least those that didn't already have large pieces of door jutting out of their bodies and therefore clearly weren't going to be causing them problems anymore. Luz felt her stomach churn at the sight of the unmistakably dead people, but tried to content herself with the fact that at least she wasn't one of them and neither were her friends.

The blue-haired witch was among the departed himself. His body lay motionless, with the smouldering white cloak draped across him like a shroud. Luz couldn't find it in herself to feel too bad about that one.

The burning tapestries had released a haze of smoke that billowed out through the ruined hallway and Luz felt disoriented by the hateful scent in the air. Amity reached out an arm to help steady Luz as she stumbled stepping forward through the grey clouds, and when she turned to offer the witch her gratitude she paused.

The firelight was dancing in Amity's amber-gold eyes in a lovely way, and flakes of ash swirling through the air around them kissed Luz's skin like warm snowflakes. The crackling of flames roared in her ears like a starving beast, and something disturbingly familiar about the scene seemed to jerk the plush carpet out from under Luz's feet. She felt unsteady, her thoughts clumsy and ill-formed as they arrived in her mind. She couldn't understand them at first. The words tasted strange and foreign.

_ My dreams... the girl in the flames. _

There was a jab of familiar pain drilling its way into Luz's temples at that thought, but she fought through it and when it faded, her thoughts still remained intact. She saw them now, sharper and with a dazzling clarity.

_ Amity? _

Luz  _ knew  _ that she had to be wrong. It was crazy. Unbelievable. She was just tired and terrified and drawing weird conclusions right now because  _ nothing  _ about today had made any sense at all.

Except...

Luz reached out a hesitant hand toward Amity's face, and when the witch didn't flinch away she rested it against her cheek. The feel of that soft, cool skin against her palm sent another shiver through Luz's spine at its tantalizing sense of familiarity.

Luz swallowed the lump in her throat and tried to steady the pounding of her heart. Her mind was flooded with questions that she didn't dare ask because of how utterly insane she knew they would sound if she was wrong... and because she was terrified of what the answers might be if she wasn't.

But she choked down the fear and tried anyway.

"Amity," Luz began slowly, "Are we… are we friends?"

Amity stared back at Luz in surprise. She hesitated for a moment and then smiled.

"Yeah," she said. "At least, I really hope that we are after everything we've been through together today, anyway."

Luz's heartbeat had shifted into overdrive. She could just leave things as they were now and it would probably be fine. The smile on Amity’s face and the hopefulness in the witch’s voice had touched something warm inside of her, and she dreaded the thought of ruining this. 

She couldn't bring herself to just stop at this point, though.

" _ Were  _ we friends?" Luz asked and then after a pause added, “Before.”

Amity looked puzzled for a fraction of a second, but then her eyes widened and the witch's breath hitched in her throat. Her mouth opened and closed silently a few times, but she seemed unable to find the right words and clamped her lips shut in a trembling line. She gave Luz the tiniest fraction of a nod.

Luz stared back, completely at a loss for words herself.

“Hey, if you two aren’t too busy flirting with each other we’ve still kind of got a thing to finish over here. Were you going to be joining us?” Eda called out in a sarcastic voice. “You know, whenever you have the time of course.”

Luz and Amity both turned toward the ruined doorway where Lilith and Eda stood waiting for them.

Amity turned back to Luz with an agonized expression, and Luz’s heart twisted in her chest at the sight. She wanted the truth, yes, but she didn’t want to  _ hurt  _ Amity to get it, either.

Maybe wanting both things was always an impossibility. Eda was right, though. There wasn’t time for this right now.

She reached out and lay her hand on Amity’s shoulder, then gave it a gentle squeeze. The softness of that touch, the lack of anger in Luz’s eyes, all seemed to steady the witch.

“Will you tell me  _ everything  _ after we’re done here?” Luz asked.

Amity nodded.

“Yes,” she said. “I promise. No more secrets.”

Luz breathed in deeply through her nose. The harsh scent of smoke was still heavy in the air, but for the first time in as long as she could remember it didn’t seem to pain her.

“Okay,” she said. “Then let’s go kick your boss’s ass.”

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback is hugely appreciated from anyone that feels like leaving some. Comments are a huge motivator!
> 
> Big, big thanks to dylemma91 for being an awesome beta-reader and helping me put this idea together! If you haven't checked out her stuff yet, you should!


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